3   1822  01275  8652 


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U3RARV 

ONlVERSat  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


ilg  'pitxxk 


As  one  in  search  of  beauty  goes 

Into  the  garden  for  a  rose, 
So  let  nie  find  some  quiet  nook, 

And  seek  for  wisdom  in  a  book, 
And  there  upon  the  printed  page 

Dream  with  the  poet  and  the  sage, 
Sucli  dreams  as  lead  the  world  aright 

Like  flaming  beacons  in  the  night. 
James  H'.  Foley 


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Social  Sciences  &  Humanities  Library 

University  of  California,  San  Diego 
Please  Note:  This  item  is  subject  to  recall. 

Date  Due 


.^.^.KV-. 


u-csn 


wpf  risieei 


a  39  (5/97) 


UCSD  Lib. 


SPRINGS  AND  WELLS 

IN  GREEK  AND  ROMAN  LITERATURE 
THEIR  LEGENDS  AND  LOCATIONS 


BY 

JAMES  REUEL  SMITH 


WITH  TWO  ILLUSTRATIONS 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

Zbc  •Rnicherbocftet  prcsa 

1922 


Copyright,  1923 

by 

James  Reuel  Smith 

All  rights  reserved,  including  the  right  of  translation  into  any  foreign  language 
Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


yl^ 


To 

HOWARD  RUSSELL  BUTLER 

who  has  fondly  pictured 

"The  Mother  of  Springs" 

IN  every  mood  of  her  beauty 

THESE   SKETCHES  OF   SOME   OF  HER   DAUGHTERS   ARE   DEDICATED 


PREFACE 

Even  the  Queen  and  the  King,  in  the  days  of  fable, 
were  constrained  to  visit  the  sources  of  water  supply 
quite  as  forcibly  as  Mahomet  was  compelled  to  the 
Mountain,  and,  just  as,  later,  the  idler  at  the  village 
pump,  or  the  more  aspiring  Spa,  learned  all  the  news  of 
the  neighborhood,  so  the  reader,  who  leisurely  traces  the 
path  that  meanders  by  the  numerous  fountains  of  the 
ancient  writers  and  makes  the  rounds  of  the  Springs  of 
Mythology,  becomes  the  entertained  recipient  of  all  the 
gossip  and  the  family  history  of  that  classic  band  of 
beings  of  the  brain  that  the  early  poets  preserved  and 
transmitted  to  posterity. 

The  gossip  at  each  successive  Spring  widens  the  reader's 
circle  of  acquaintance,  and,  before  the  end  of  the  path  is 
reached,  there  is  little  of  interest  in  the  records  of  the 
masters  of  make-believe  that  has  not  been  laid  before 
the  literary  loiterer  and  absorbed  in  the  most  pleasant 
manner. 

One  of  the  first  of  the  philosophic  tenets  likely  to 
present  itself  to  the  hvunan  mind  would  be  Metemp- 
sychosis, and  Metamorphosis  would  follow  by  natural 
suggestion.  Given  the  factors  of  facial  resemblance, 
affection  and  absence,  and  the  germs  of  the  doctrine 
would  inevitably  sprout  in  some  thinking  brain. 

Later,  in  meditation,  fancy  and  reasoning  would  find 
no  limit  to  the  guises  the  vital  spirit  might  assume.  When 
one  had  seen  the  yolk  of  a  little  egg  change  into  an  eagle 


vi  PREFACE 

with  a  six-foot  spread  of  wing  and  fly  away  out  of  sight 
Heavenward;  or  had  discovered  that  a  tiny  acorn  could 
assume  the  form  of  a  tree  and  become  a  giant  in  size  and 
strength,  it  was  not  a  stretch  for  the  imagination  but 
rather  a  pastime  to  fancy  a  human  being  changed  into 
any  conceivable  object;  or  even,  as  in  the  story  of  Deu- 
calion and  Pyrrha,  or  that  of  Cadmus,  to  suppose  stones 
transformed  into  men  and  women,  or  teeth  into  a  fully 
accoutered  army. 

A  simple  plot  was  thus  naturally  furnished  upon  which 
to  ring  the  changes  of  a  thousand  tales,  going  back  even 
to  the  creation  of  the  world  out  of — nothing. 

Every  country  and  every  tongue  produced  entertain- 
ing fancies  of  this  character,  borrowed,  interchanged  and 
elaborated  through  legendary  medium,  until,  at  last^ 
they  appeared  polished  in  rhythm,  and  then  in  writing. 

Such  tales  came  down  from  Hesiod,  Homer  and  Ovid 
in  their  best  embellished  form,  and,  among  them  all, 
those  relating  to  transformations  into  Springs  are  neither 
the  least  romantic  nor  absorbing,  for  the  thread  of  them 
is,  in  many  instances,  spun  from  an  ardent  affection. 

In  these  stories  writers  sometimes  differ  in  giving 
names,  and,  sometimes,  more  or  less  in  their  versions. 
Perfect  agreement  among  them,  however,  could  hardly 
be  looked  for  when  it  is  considered  that  ancient  authors 
frequently  had  to  rely  upon  memory,  as,  with  the  com- 
paratively few  manuscripts  then  in  existence,  it  was  often 
impracticable  to  verify  names  and  details  by  referring 
to  the  original  work  from  which  the  account  was 
drawn. 

Ovid's  description  of  the  Creation  shows  a  common 
origin  with  that  of  Moses — similarly,  he  mentions  the 
Springs  as  the  first  terrestrial  features  created — and  a 
serious  interest  attaches  to  Mythology  from  the  fre- 


PREFACE  vii 

quently  overlooked  fact  that  it  was  for  two  thousand  or 

more  years  the  religion  of  millions  of  people,  among 
whom  were  some  of  the  brightest  intellects  of  which  there 
is  any  record.  Mythology,  giving  the  genealogy  of  the 
gods  from  the  beginning,  was  the  Bible  of  those  people 
and  they  accepted  its  most  wonderful  relation  with  no 
less  gravity  and  respect  than  pious  modern  people,  Mor- 
mons, Mohammedans,  and  others,  accept  the  miracles 
in  the  basic  books  of  their  religions. 

Temples  were  frequently  built  about  or  above  Springs; 
and  on  the  13th  day  of  October  the  Festival  of  the  Fon- 
tinalia  was  held  in  honor  of  the  divinities  that  presided 
over  all  Springs  and  fountains. 

The  nymphs  of  the  Springs  were  the  naiads  to  whom 
they  were  sacred,  and  this  was  not  only  poetical  but 
practical,  for,  when  the  Spring  is  the  sole  source  of  supply, 
its  waters  need  to  be  carefully  protected  so  that  they 
may  be  clear  and  clean  at  all  times,  and,  among  the  re- 
ligiously superstitious  Greeks  and  Romans,  such  purity 
was  best  assured  by  appealing  to  their  fears  and  call- 
ing them  sacred,  thus  making  their  pollution  an  act  of 
sacrilege. 

The  sacredness  of  the  fountains  being  thus  established, 
and  their  waters  being  perpetual,  they  became  preemi- 
nently fitted  to  be  called  upon  as  witnesses  when  making 
vows,  and  they  were  so  called  upon  even  in  ordinary 
assertion  and  exclamation,  as,  "By  the  Earth  and  all  its 
Springs,"  "Now  by  the  Wells  whereof  our  Fathers  drank," 
"O  Fount  of  Dirce  and  thou,  spacious  Grove,  ye  are  my 
witnesses." 

Pausanias  is  one  of  the  most  prolific  enumerators  ot 
Grecian  Springs,  but  unfortunately  he  gives  little  data 
from  which  their  appearance  may  be  pictured.  The 
poets,  however,  often  portrayed  the  peculiarities  of  their 


viii  PREFACE 

founts  with  minute  detail,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  their 
likenesses  were  true  to  nature. 

Pausanias  did  little  more  than  enumerate,  and  his  book 
might  be  called  a  catalog  of  ruins  from  which  one  who  is 
not  on  the  spot  can  seldom  draw  any  but  a  hazy  outline 
of  what  he  saw.  The  greater  part  of  the  temples  and 
towns  that  he  seems  to  have  seen  had  been  in  ruins  for 
centuries  before  he  wrote  about  them,  and  were  in  a  more 
dilapidated  condition  than  the  cities  and  cathedrals  in 
the  war-stricken  districts  of  Europe  in  191 8.  The  best 
of  the  statuary  had  been  carried  off  by  conquerors,  or 
was  buried  in  the  wreckage  of  roofless  temples,  and  such 
wooden  works  of  ancient  art  as  remained  were  mutilated 
and  rotting  with  age. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  where  he  spent  his 
nights  on  the  road  through  these  ruins,  and  on  what  he 
subsisted;  he  mentions  no  caravansary  and  no  wine 
shop — but  one  can  almost  tell  how  often  he  quenched 
his  thirst,  by  the  names  of  the  Springs  he  jotted  down  in 
his  diary. 

In  fact,  mountains,  Springs  and  watercourses  are  now 
the  best  guides  to  the  route  he  took  in  his  travels.  The 
mountains  and  the  rivers  are  shown  more  or  less  meagerly 
in  such  atlases  as  furnish  a  very  small  scale  map  of 
"Ancient"  this  or  that,  but  no  one  can  get  an  idea  of  the 
whereabouts  of  the  Springs  without  perusing  the  pages 
of  old  travelers,  or  those  of  the  poets,  or  laboriously  and 
often  in  vain  going  through  Geographical  Dictionaries, 
and  the  present  is  the  first  attempt  to  group  together 
many  of  the  Springs  that  classic  authors  of  prose  and 
poetry  have  thought  worthy  of  mention. 

After  the  deluge  of  the  Greeks,  who  perhaps  derived 
much  of  their  mythology  from  the  Egyptians,  Deucalion 
and  Pyrrha,  the  leaders  of  such  as  had  survived  with  the 


PREFACE  ix 

animals,  not  in  a  ship,  but  by  seeking  the  heights  of  Mt. 
Parnassus,  descended  the  mountain  and  began  repeopling 
the  country  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Spring  of  Castalia. 

That  Spring,  having  been  erroneously  endowed  by  the 
Roman  poets  with  inspirational  properties,  has  become 
the  most  famous  Spring  in  the  literary  worid,  so  that, 
though  there  is  no  fable  of  any  transformation  as  its 
origin,  it  may  be  regarded  as  the  origin  of  many  trans- 
formations. 

But  incalculable  harm  has  thereby  been  done  to  the 
Spring  of  Aganippe,  and  it  is  time  she  came  into  her  own. 

Still,  as  Castalia,  up  to  the  present,  has  enjoyed  the 
honor  of  being  the  most  noted  Spring  in  the  world,  and 
neither  sought  the  undue  honor  nor  could  protest  against 
it,  it  would  seem  to  deserve  first  mention  in  a  list  of 
Springs.  Its  history,  however,  commences  with  the 
flood,  and  there  are  antediluvian  fountains  whose  age 
claims  precedence,  especially  those  of  Arcadia,  as  to 
whose  residents  a  suggestion  is  hazarded  in  the  Foreword 
to  The  Springs  of  Thessaly. 

Greece  was  a  dwarf  country  whose  distances  were  im- 
pressively magnified  by  the  measure  that  was  used  to 
express  them;  thus  the  great  stretch  of  1400  stadia,  both 
in  length  and  in  breadth,  that  was  assigned  to  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus, represents  175  miles  when  the  stadia  are  taken 
at  their  modern  value  of  a  furlong  each  and  eight  of  them 
are  reckoned  to  the  mile. 

In  all  languages  "Spring"  and  "Well"  are  often  used 
interchangeably  and  the  "Well"  of  the  classics  is  nearly 
always  a  Spring ;  when,  in  rare  cases,  it  is  really  a  driven 
well  this  is  usually  made  clear  either  by  the  context,  or  by 
the  reports  of  modern  describers  who  have  rediscovered 
the  shaft. 

An  ancient  author  is  cited  in  every  case  as  a  base 


X  PREFACE 

from  which  the  history  and  fortunes  of  any  particular 
fountain  may  be  followed  down  in  detail. 

A  series  of  intimate  impressions  of  ancient  springs  as 
modern  features  having  been  interrupted  by  the  out- 
break of  the  recent  war,  that  phase  of  the  subject  has 
for  the  most  part  been  drawn  from  reports  of  scholarly 
travelers  of  the  17th  century  and  subsequent  years; 
and  a  concrete  list  of  their  names  is  substituted  for 
several  thousand  scattered  references,  to  them  and  to 
ancient  writers,  which  have  been  deleted  as  being  unduly 
cumbersome  in  a  book  for  popular  reading. 

J.  R.  S. 

New  York,  December,  1920. 


Authorities  Cited  for  Legends  or 
Ancient  Locations 

About  B.C.      A.D. 

^schylus  525 

Apollodorus  443 
Apollonius 

Rhodius  235 

Aristophanes  444 

Athenaeus  .  .       200 

Callimachus  260 

Cicero  106 

Claudian  . .       400 

Diodorus  50 

Euripides  406 

Florus  65 

Herodotus  400 

Hesiod  850 

Homer  950 

Horace  65 

Hyginus  10 

Juvenal  . .         96 

Livy  59 
Lucan  . .         65 


About  B.C. 

A.D. 

Martial 

43 

Ovid 

. . 

18 

Pausanias 

. . 

170 

Philostratus 

182 

Plautus 

254 

Pliny; 

the  elder 

79 

Pliny; 

the  younger 

no 

Propertius 

14 

Ptolemy 

100 

Servius 

400 

Strabo 

24 

Suetonius 

[40 

Theocritus 

300 

Theophrastus 

350 

Thucydides 

471 

Virgil 

19 

Vitruvius 

100 

Xenophon 

435 

Authorities  for  Modern  Locations 


Clavier,  E. 
Dodwell,  Edward 
Fellows,  C. 
Hamilton,  W.  J. 
Irby  &  Mangles 
Leake,  Wm.  M. 
Mangles,  Irby  & 
Mure,  Wm.,  of  Caldwell 
Murray,  Hugh 


Pococke,  Ed. 
Smith,  Dr.  Wm. 
Spon  &  Wheeler 
Texier,  C.  F.  M. 
Wheeler,  Spon  & 
Wilkins,  Wm. 
Wilkinson,  Sir  J.  G. 
Wordsworth,  Christopher 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface  v 

List  of  Basic  Authorities      ......  xi 

Synopsis xv 

Springs  and  Wells  of: — 

Greece      i 

Peloponnesus i 

Central  Greece    .         .        .        .         .        .        .140 

Northern  Greece 257 

Magna  GRiEciA 293 

Asia  Minor 312 

Greek  Islands           .......  383 

Foreign  Countries 421 

Homer 537 

ViRGU. 554 

Italy 568 

Italian  Islands .661 

Indexes: — 

A — Names    and    Characteristics    of    Springs    and 

Wells 683 

B — Divinities,  People,  Places  and  Subjects    .  694 

C — Countries,  Divisions,  Districts  and  Islands      ,  721 


xiu 


SYNOPSIS 

SPRINGS  AND  WELLS  OF 

GREECE 

PELOPONNESUS: 
Arcadia: I 

Neda-Hagno,  Arne,  Three  Wells,  CEnoe,  Tritonis,  Linus, 
Mt.  Elaion,  Tegea,  Leuconius,  The  Blacksmith's  Well, 
Well  at  Phigalia,  Jay's  Well,  Lymax,  Melangeia,  Mt.  Ales- 
ium,  Alalcomenea,  Orchomenus  Well,  W^ells  called  Teneae, 
Nonacris  (Styx),  Masnalus,  Stymphelus,  Clitorian  Spring, 
Crathis,  Well  Alyssus,  Lusi,  Menelaus',  Philip's  Well, 
Well  of  the  Meliastse,  Olympias,  Alpheus,  Ladon,  Eryman- 
thus,  Brentheates,  Buphagus.Helisson,  Scolitas,Bathyllus, 
Theater  Spring,  Dionysus',  Hill  Spring,  Lusius-Gortynius, 
Nymphasia,  Tragus. 

Argolis: 47 

Adrastea,  Perseus',  Amymone,  Physadea,  Hippocrene, 
Hercules'  Well,  Hycessa,  Inachus,  Treton,  Asopus,  Erasi- 
nus,  Hyllicus,  Methana,  Wells  of  Hermione,  Well  of  Cana- 
thus.  Wells  and  Fountains  of  ^Esculapius,  Dine. 

Laconia: 75 

iEsculapius',  Gythium,  Pellanis,  Lancea,  Dorcea,  Envoys' 
Well,  Tiassus,  Messeis,  Polydeucea,  Marius,  Nymphaeum, 
Water  of  the  Moon,  Tamarum,  Pluto's  Springs,  Atalanta's, 
Belemina,  Fortunate  Springs,  Anonus,  Gelaco,  Naia,  Ger- 
onthrae. 

Messenia: 94 

Dionysus',  Clepsydra,  Pamisus,  Pharae,  Well  Achaia,  CE- 
chalia,  Plataniston,  Mothone. 


xvi  SYNOPSIS 

Elis: 104 

Piera,  Pisa,  Salmone,  Cytherus,  Letrini,  Arene,  Aniger, 
Cruni. 

Achaia:       ----------     116 

Patrae,  Pharas,  Well  of  Argyra,  Well  of  ^gium,  Mysseum, 
Cyros,  Sybaris,  Dirce,  Cymothe. 

Sicyonia: -        -,       -        -        -     123 

Dripping  Well  (Dropping  fountain.) 

Corinthia: 126 

Corinth  (foreword),  Peirene,  Glauce,  Well  of  Lema,  Bath 
of  Helen. 

Megaris: 138 

Fount  of  the  Sithnides. 

CENTRAL  GREECE: 

Attica: 140 

Athens'  Springs,  Erechtheium  Well,  Callirrhoe,  Halirrho- 
thius,  Semnae,  Clepsydra,  Pan  and  Apollo,  Panopus,  Calli- 
chorus,  Well  of  Flowers,  Eridanus,  Cephisia,  Macaria, 
Larine,  Attic  fountain. 

Boeotia: 167 

Thebes',  Dirce,  Ares',  Strophie,  Antiope,  Well  of  (Edipus, 
Aulis,  Potniae,  Hercyna,  Tilphusa,  Amphiaraus',  Hysiae, 
Maenads',  Well  of  Dirce,  Fountain  of  Cithaeron,  Plataea, 
Gargaphia,  Asopus,  Cissusa,  Lophis,  Acidalia,  Orcho- 
menus,  Arethusa,  Epicrane,  Qldipodia,  Psamathe,  Melas, 
Cyrtones,  Donacon,  Thespife,  Libethrias  and  Petra,  Aga-  ■  '^ 
nippe,  Hippocrene,  Other  Helicon  vSprings. 

Phocis: 222 

Phocis  (foreword),  Castalia,  Cassotis,  Corycian  cave's, 
Crow's  Spring,  Cirrha,  Hyampolis  Well,  Cephissus,  Pano- 
peus,  Stiris,  Saunion  Well. 

.ffitolia: 244 

Callirrhoe,  Orea,  Hyrie,  Phana,  Mt.  Taphiassus  Spring. 


SYNOPSIS  xvii 

Acamania: ---        -        .    253 

Crenae.  '  ■ 

EastLocris: 254 

Thermopylas,  i5)anis. 

NORTHERN  GREECE: 
Epirus: ._-.-    257 

Achelous,  Athamanis  (Dodona),  Lyncestis,  Royal  waters, 
Chimerium. 

Ill3rricum: --..    265 

Apollonia,  Cephissus  (see  Phocis). 

Thessaly: 266 

Thessaly  (foreword),  Hypereia,  Messeis,  Cerona,  Neleus, 
Peneus,  Titaresius,  Dyras,  Cranon,  Pagasae,  Inachus,  Eury- 
menae. 

Macedonia: --    280 

Pimplea,  Baphyra,  Fountain  of  Inna,  JEa,  Pella,  Litae, 
Nonacris. 

Thrace: 288 

Well  Libethra,  Teams,  Tritonian  lake. 


MAGNA  GRiECIA 

Bruttii,Iapygia,  CEnotria:    -------    293 

Foreword,  Fountain  of  Blood  (Sybaris),  Thuria,  Medma, 
Locria,  Well  Lyca,  Leuca,  Ela. 


ASIA  MINOR 

Mysia: 312 

Caicus,  Astyra,  Royal  fountain,  Dascylum,  Artacian  foun- 
tain, Cleite,  Jason's,  Perperena. 

Bithynia:    ----------    319 

Pegae,  Amycus,  Azaritia,  Pliny's  Bithynian. 


xviii  SYNOPSIS 

Paphlagonia:       ---------     326 

Paphlagonian  fountain. 

Pontus:       ---- 327 

Thermodon,  Cainochorion,  ApoUonia,  Phazemonitae. 

Lydia: 330 

Niobe,  Hypela;us,  Calippia,  Smyrna,  Claros,  Pactolus, 
Clazomenas. 

Phrygia: 341 

Marsyas',  Rhyndacus,  Claeon,  Gelon,  Pipe  fountain 
(Masander),  Lycus,  Midas'  Well,  Themisonium,  Caruru 
Boiling  Springs,  Hierapolis,  Gallus,  Dorylaeum,  Menos- 
come.  Lion's  village  Spring,  Sangarius,  Arms  of  Briareus, 
Fountain  of  Midas. 

Cappadocia: -..-     356 

Asmabaean  Well. 

Caria:         - 358 

Cnidus,  Petrifying  Spring,  Labranda,  Phausia,  Salmacis, 
Byblis,  Branchidae,  Achillean  fountain,  Mylasa. 

Lycia: 372 

Mela,  Dinus,  Limyra,  Myra,  Cyaneae,  Plane  tree  fountain. 

Cilicia:        ----- 377 

Pikron  Hydor,  Pyramus,  Cydnus. 

Colchis:  Foiin tains  of  Hephaestus.        -----     380 


GREEK  ISLANDS 

Ithaca: 383 

Arethusa,  Penelope's  Spring. 

.ffigina:       ----- 387 

Psamathe. 


SYNOPSIS  s^ 

Euboea: 39i 

Foreword,  ^depsus,  Hercules',  Arethusa,  Lelantum. 

Tenedos:    - 397 

Tenedos. 

Lesbos: .--    398 

Lesbos  (Sappho's  Spring). 

Cydonea:    ----------    401 

Cydonea. 
Andros:      ----------    401 

Andros  (Dionysus'). 
Samos:       ----------    403 

Samian  Spring,  Gigartho,  Leucothea. 
Ceos: 405 

Carthea,  lulis,  Cea. 

Tenos: 409 

Tenos. 

Delos: 410 

Delos  (Latona's). 

Cos:  - 414 

Burinna. 

Nisjrrus:     ----------     416 

Nisyrus. 

Crete: 417 

Gortyna,  Sauros,  Ceres'  Spring. 

FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

Africa: .-..     421 

Foreword,  Nigris,  Serpent  Spring,  Sandhills'  Springs,  Augi- 
la,  Garamantes,  Debris,  Atarantes,  Atlantes,  Fountain  of 
the  Sun,  Flora's,  Tacape,  Cinyps,  Tunis,  Zama,  Carthage, 
Cyrene,  Thestes,  Ex  pede  Herculem. 


XX  SYNOPSIS 

Egypt: 447 

Nile,  Well  of  Syene,  Blackthorn  Spring,  Memnon,  Wells  of 
Apis,  Pyramid  Well,  Marea,  Cairo,  Rhacotis,  Pharos, 
Bitter  Springs,  Tatnos. 

Ethiopia: 469 

Fountain  of  Health,  Liparis,  Tisitia,  Red  fountain,  Cucios. 

Arabia:       -- 472 

Arabia,  ^Enuscabales,  Coralis,  Daulotos,  Dora,  Arsinoe, 
Red  Sea  Spring,  Seven  Wells,  Petra. 

Phoenicia,  Palestine: 476 

Joppa,  Hiericus,  Engadda,  Callirrhoe,  Jordan,  Tiberias, 
Aradus. 

Mesopotamia: 486 

Callirhoe,  Chabura. 

Armenia: -        -        -        --    488 

Armenia,  Euphrates,  Tigris. 

Assyria,  Syria,  Persia: 491 

Thisbe's  Spring,  Babylonian  naptha,  Ardericca  Well,  Cas- 
talian  Spring  (Daphne),  Typhon,  One  Thousand  Springs, 
Dardes,  Euleus,  Bagistanus,  Golden  Water. 

England: 501 

Aquae  Sulis. 

France,  Belgium: 502 

Bormo,  Aquae  Calidae  (Vichy),  Orge,  Aquae  Convenarum, 
Aquae  Tarbella;  (Aqs),  Aquae  Sextiae  (Aix),  Aquae  Gratianae 
(Aix-les-Bains),  Nemausus,  Woimd-cure  Springs,  Pons 
Tungrorum  (Spa). 

Switzerland: 510 

Rhone. 

Spain: 512 

Tartessus,  Pillars  of  Hercules,  Tamaricus,  Magnet-Hke 
Springs,  False  Goldfish,  Ilerda,  Aquae  Calidae,  Ana. 


SYNOPSIS  xxi 

Germany: 541 

Danube,  Rhine,  Paralysis,  Mattiacum. 

Riissia,  Scythia:  ----.--_    527 

Exampaeus,  Librosus,  Lethe. 

India: 531 

Fountains  of  Calanus,  Ganges. 

EPIC  POETS 

Homer: 537 

Foreword,  Meles,  Fountains  of  Mt.  Ida,  Scamander, 
Simois,  Laestrygonia,  Lotos-Land,  Lach^a,  Apollo's  Isle, 
Ogygia,  Phaeacia,  Ithaca,  Pharian  Isle,  Ithaca,  Unnamed 
Springs. 

Virgil: 554 

Foreword,  Bucolics'  Springs,  Theocritus'  Springs,  Geor- 
gics',  Castalia,  Peneus,  Clitumnus,  ^neid's,  Arethusa, 
Timavus,  Eridanus,  Numicus,  Silvia's  Fawn  Spring, 
Libyan,  Avemus,  Cocytus  Mire  Spring,  Lethe. 

ITALY 
Latiimi: 568 

Rome,  Bona  Dea,  Tarpeia,  Ausonia,  Fatmus  and  Picus, 
Egeria,  Jutuma,  Mercury's,  Apostles'  Springs,  St.  Peter's,    - 
St.  Paul's,  Virgin's  Spring,  Egeria  (Aricia),  Albunea,  Fonte 
Bello,    Sinuessa,    Pliny's    Laurentian,    Labanae,    Golden 
Water,  Neptunian,  Feronia,  Ghost -Laying  Springs. 

Campania: 621 

Baiae,  Posidian,  Cicero's  Water,  Salmads,  Araxus,  Acidula, 
Well  of  Acerra,  Fountain  of  Samus. 

Apulia: -        -        .        .        .    628 

Bandusia  (Horace's  Spring). 

Calabria  (see  also  Magna  Graecia,  page  293) :         -        -        -     630 
Bnmdusiimi. 


xxii  SYNOPSIS 

Peligni: --    631 

Marcian,  Ovid's  Spring. 

Sabini:        .--.-.--..     634 

Albula,  Neminia,  Cotyliae. 

Etruria: 636 

Pliny's  Tuscan  founts,  Aquae  Tauri,  Pisa,  Vetulonia,  Caere- 
tana,  Feronia,  Aquae  Apollinares,  Aquae  Passeris,  Clusian. 

Umbria:      - 646 

Rubicon,  Clitumnus. 

Liguria: 650 

Eridanus,  Aquae  Statiellas,  Padua,  Aponian  Springs. 

Gallia  Transpadana: 655 

Pliny's  Wonderful  Spring. 

Venetia: 658 

Timavus,  Monte  Falcone, 

ITALIAN  ISLANDS 
Sicily:         -        -        - 661 

Enna,  Cyane,  Arethusa,  Acis,  Founts  of  the  Palici,  Agri- 
gentum,  Plinthia,  Leontium,  Temenitis,  Archidemia,  Ma-  ' 
gaea,  Milichie,  Anapus,  Amenanus. 

Sardinia: >-    681 

Aq.  Lesitanae,  Aq.  Hypsitanae,  Aq.  Neapolitanae. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PACE 

Neda;  The  Oldest  Spring        .         .         .         .   Frontispiece 
Byblis  Changing  into  a  Spring      .         .         .        Opposite  365 


SPRINGS  AND  WELLS 


GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

ARCADIA 

I 

Neda;  Hagno 

Arcadia  offers  a  most  suitable  starting  point  for  a  read- 
ing ramble  through  southern  Greece. 

Circling  over  Mt.  Cyllene,  which  is  more  than  a  mile 
and  a  quarter  high  and  lacks  less  than  two  hundred  feet 
of  being  the  highest  peak  in  the  peninsula,  one  would  see 
the  latter  making  its  own  map  and  describing  the  form  of 
a  mulberry  leaf,  a  shape  that  suggested  the  present  name 
of  Morea  and  displaced  the  earlier  one  of  Pelops'  Isle 
or  Peloponnesus. 

Arcadia  has  been  called  the  Switzerland  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus of  which  it  is  the  second  largest  country,  having 
a  territory  equal  to  a  tract  forty  miles  square,  as  against 
Laconia's  square  of  forty-three  and  a  half  miles. 

The  Arcadians  claimed  an  antiquity  greater  than  that 
of  the  moon,  a  boast  that  becomes  remarkably  suggestive 
when  considered  in  connection  with  a  theory  of  one  of  the 
leading  astronomers  of  the  XXth  century  that  the  earth's 
satellite  was  thrown  off  from  the  western  part  of  North 
America. 

Among  the  Greeks  the  Arcadians  were  considered  the 
rudest  of  their  countrymen,  and  their  religious  ceremo- 
nies included  hiunan  sacrifices  down  to  the  Macedonian 
period. 


2  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

Thanks,  however,  to  the  Latin  poets,  arcadian  has 
become  a  synonym  for  ideal  innocence  and  virtue  as 
illustrated  in  the  lives  of  simple  shepherds  and  their 
mates. 

Arcadia  was  surrounded  by  mountains  and  was  land- 
locked near  the  middle  of  the  Morea;  but  in  compensa- 
tion for  her  isolation  from  the  sea  she  was  richer  in  river 
sources  than  any  of  the  surrounding  districts. 

The  Alpheus,  the  chief  river  of  Greece,  rose  in  her 
boundaries,  and  so  did  "the  most  ancient  of  waters" — 
the  Spring  of  Neda. 

By  the  brink  of  that  Spring  one  stood  at  the  entrance 
to  the  Corridor  of  Time. 

Nearby  was  Lycosura,  the  oldest  town;  the  first  that 
the  sun  looked  upon;  the  model  of  men's  subsequent 
cities. 

And  yet  Lycosura  was  some  way  down  the  Corridor, 
for  before  the  time  of  towns  came  the  gardens  of  the  gods, 
and  the  birthplace  of  the  greatest  of  the  gods  was  at  the 
Spring  of  Neda  on  Mt.  Lycaeus  where  Rhea  became  the 
mother  of  Zeus,  or  Jupiter  as  he  was  called  across 
the  sea,  in  Italy. 

Other  people,  it  is  true,  contended  that  Zeus  was 
reared  in  their  district,  but  the  claim  of  the  Arcadians  is 
made  appealing  by  its  circumstantial  presentation  of 
details. 

Rhea's  name,  given  to  a  cave  on  Mt.  Lycaeus,  locates 
the  exact  scene  of  the  great  event;  before  it  occurred 
there  was  no  water  in  sight  in  any  part  of  Arcadia,  all  of 
its  fountains  being  then  still  beneath  the  surface  of  the 
earth. 

But  as  soon  as  the  birth  occurred  Rhea  raised  her  great 
arm  and  smote  a  spur  of  Mt.  Lycaeus  called  Cerausius  so 
that  it  was  rent  asunder,  and  this  Spring  burst  forth  for 


ARCADIA  3 

the  infant's  bath.  It  formed  the  River  Neda  which  the 
Arcadians  called  the  most  ancient  water,  and  which  had 
the  additional  distinction  of  being  the  crookedest  river  in 
Greece;  indeed  it  ran  more  erratically  than  any  river  in 
the  world,  as  it  was  then  known,  except  the  Phrygian 
river  Maeander  whose  600  windings  are  proverbial  and 
have  enriched  languages  with  a  word  to  express  superla- 
tive sinuosity. 

Three  Nymphs  acted  as  nurses  for  Rhea  and  the 
juvenile  Jove;  Neda,  Thisoa  andHagno;  and  the  same 
writer  who  calls  it  Neda  says  that  Hagno  gave  her  name 
to  the  Spring  on  Mt.  Lycasus;  under  that  name  it  is  said 
that  the  stream's  flow  was  unusually  constant,  it  fiu-- 
nished  as  much  water  in  summer  as  in  winter,  and  in 
periods  of  drought  it  became  the  producer  of  rain,  to 
cause  which  it  was  only  necessary,  after  the  proper  sacri- 
fice had  been  made,  to  lower  a  branch  of  oak  to  its  surface 
and  gently  stir  the  water;  whereupon  a  steam-like  mist 
would  rise,  and  after  a  little  interval  become  a  cloud,  and 
this  cloud  gradually  growing,  and  joined  by  other  clouds, 
the  parched  parts  of  Arcadia  were  soon  overcast,  and 
then  refreshed  by  a  gentle  rain,  all  of  which  had  started 
from  the  stirring  of  the  Spring,  which  was  a  much  quieter 
and  pleasanter  process  than  one  modern  method  of  caus- 
ing rain  by  cannonading  and  noisy  explosions. 

Among  Jove's  many  epithets  was  that  of  Pluvius, 
Rainmaker,  an  attribute  that  perhaps  led  to  the  concep- 
tion of  this  pretty  conceit  that  the  Spring  possessed  in 
a  limited  degree  the  power  of  the  baby  god  that  was 
brought  up  by  its  waters. 

Rather  remarkably  this  use  of  a  branch  to  produce 
some  peculiar  virtue  in  a  Spring  seems  never  to  have  been 
improved  upon — Moses  used  it  and  so  did  Ehsha,  and 
even  the  water  finder  of  the  present  day,  when  he  has 


4  GREECE; PELOPONNESUS 

supplied  himself  with  nothing  more  than  a  hazel  twig,  is 
fully  equipped  to  locate  the  spot  that  shall,  on  digging  or 
boring,  produce  the  needed  water,  after,  as  of  yore,  a 
certain  sacrifice  having  a  pecuniary  value  has  been  made 
by  the  landowner. 

Near  the  Spring  of  Hagno  were  two  very  notable 
groves,  in  one  of  which,  the  sacred  Grove  of  Despoena, 
were  specimens  of  grafting,  far  antedating  and  out- 
wizarding  the  works  of  Burbank,  that  showed  trees  of 
different  kinds,  such  as  the  oak  and  the  olive,  growing 
from  the  same  root.  In  the  other  grove,  that  flourished 
long  before  the  days  of  "Peter  Schlemihl,"  men  and 
beasts  cast  no  shadows  at  any  season  of  the  year,  al- 
though, as  it  was  understood  that  any  man  who  entered 
this  grove  would  not  live  more  than  a  year,  it  is  per- 
haps not  very  surprising  that  in  those  days  of  rampant 
superstition  no  men's  shadows  were  ever  seen  in  the 
enclosure. 

This  ancient  wonder  was  itself  only  an  improvement  on 
the  account  of  a  similarly  shadowless  forest,  of  Syene  in 
Ethiopia,  in  which  animals  and  trees  cast  no  reflections, 
during  that  part  of  the  year  when  the  sun  was  in  Cancer. 
(See  No.  324.) 

Perhaps  it  was  somewhere  among  these  scenes  of  the 
genesis  of  Jove  that  he  afterwards  had  made  that  wonder- 
ful creation  of  the  Grecian  mind — the  first  woman;  for 
Mt.  Lycasus  was  known  also  as  Mt.  Olympus,  and  it  was 
the  Olympian  body  collectively  that  under  Jove's  com- 
mand produced  the  composite  creation  Pandora.  The 
account  is  more  elaborate  than  the  Mosaic  relation,  and 
it  is  only  a  coincidence  that  Eden  read  backwards  sug- 
gests the  name  of  Neda. 

Jove  having  given  his  instructions,  the  Olympians 
began  their  composite  labor;  Vulcan,  mixing  earth  with 


ARCADIA  5 

water,  "fashioned  one  like  unto  a  modest,  fair  and  lovely 
maiden:  Venus  endowed  her  head  with  grace:  Minerva 
girdled  and  arrayed  her;  and  around  her  skin  the  Goddess 
Graces  and  august  Persuasion  hung  golden  chains.  The 
fair  tressed  hours  crowned  her  about  with  flowers  of 
spring;  and  Pallas  adapted  every  ornament  to  her  person. 

"  But  Mercury  endowed  her  with  a  shameless  mind,  and 
in  her  breast  wrought  falsehoods  and  wily  speeches,  and 
tricksy  manners,  and  a  winning  voice.  And  all  bestowed 
on  her  a  mischief  to  inventive  men,  to  whom  she  was 
given  that  they  might  delight  themselves  at  heart  and  hug 
their  own  evil,  and  against  which  all  man's  arts  are  vain." 

And  perhaps  if  the  Spring  of  Hagno  could  have  spoken 
when  she  first  looked  in  its  mirror  she  would  have  heard, 
like  Eve  at  Eden's  Spring,  "What  there  thou  seest,  fair 
creature,  is  thyself." 

This  Spring  produces  an  impetuous  river,  now  called 
Buzi,  which  during  its  journey  to  the  west  performs  much 
important  and  delicate  work  in  defining  the  boundary 
lines  of  three  countries;  first  adjusting  the  borders  of 
Arcadia  and  Messenia,  and  then  outlining  the  strip  that 
separates  Messenia  from  Elis  at  whose  southern  extrem- 
ity it  passes  into  the  Ionian  Sea. 

Callimachus;  Hymn  to  Jupiter.     Pausanias;  VIII.  38. 


2 

Arne 

Some  ten  stadia  beyond  the  plain  of  Argum  and  near 
the  highroad  was  another  plain  in  which  was  the  fountain 
of  Arne,  Lamb  Fountain.  It  is  second  in  interest  only 
to  the  Spring  of  Neda,  for  Poseidon,  the  brother  of  Zeus, 
was  reared  at  this  fountain  and  fed  with  the  lambs  of  the 


6  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

flocks  it  watered,  when  his  mother  Rhea  had  deceived 
Cronus  in  order  to  prevent  him  from  eating  the  baby 
sea  god  whom  the  Romans  called  Neptune.  ' '■■j* '^  •'? 

The  tale  of  her  deceit  seems  to  furnish  a  reason  for  the 
appellation  Hippius  that  was  often  given  to  Poseidon 
which  is  more  likely  than  any  of  the  explanations  usually 
offered ;  it  was,  as  Rhea  told  it,  that  Cronus'  latest  son 
was  a  foal,  and  he,  as  she  had  expected,  immediately  de- 
voured the  colt  that  she  led  up  to  him  to  prove  her  story. 

This  royal  example  might  have  made  horseflesh  more 
popular  had  Cronus  not  weakened  his  authority  as  an 
epicure  by  devoiuing  with  equal  avidity  the  stone  that 
Rhea  at  another  time  made  him  believe  was  the  form 
in  which  his  son  Zeus  had  been  born. 

The  fountain  of  Arne  was  about  twelve  stadia  from 
what  two  thousand  years  ago  was  called  "the  modern" 
town  of  Mantineia,  on  the  Ophis,  the  Dragon,  River;  the 
inhabitants  of  the  ancient  town  of  that  name,  founded 
by  Mantineus  the  son  of  Lycaon,  having  been  guided 
to  the  new  site  by  a  Dragon.  Other  old  Mantineans  were 
said  to  have  gone  still  farther  away,  and  to  have  been  the 
original  settlers  of  Bithynia  in  Asia  Minor — a  contention 
quite  in  accord  with  the  Arcadian  propensity  to  make 
sweeping  claims,  such  as  that  their  Evander  settled  by 
the  Roman  Tiber  before  the  Trojan  War;  that  their 
Italus  gave  his  name  to  Italy ;  that  Zeus  was  born  in  Arca- 
dia ;  that  the  Arcadians  were  the  oldest  people  in  Greece ; 
and  that  they  lived  there  before  the  Moon  was  created. 
Paleopoli  now  represents  the  ancient  Mantineia  and 
Arne  would  doubtless  be  found  almost  due  south  of  it, 
and  a  mile  and  a  half  distant,  were  it  not  that  the  courses 
of  the  surrounding  streams,  and  even  the  channel  of  the 
river,  which  is  still  called  the  Ophis,  have  been  changed 
many  times  in  attempts  to  prevent  the  flooding  of  the 


ARCADIA  7 

plain,  watery  incursions  in  which  one  might  fancy  ghostly 
revisitations  of  the  sea  god  to  the  site  of  his  lambs'  wool 
cradle. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  8. 


3 

Three  Wells 

Hermes  was  born  in  the  mountains  called  Tricrena  at  a 
place  where  there  were  Three  Wells  in  which  the  Nymphs 
of  the  mountains  gave  him  his  first  bath,  thereby  mak- 
ing the  springs  sacred  to  that  god,  the  Mercury  of  the 
Romans.  He  was  brought  up  on  a  hill  by  the  town  of 
Acacesium  near  Mt.  Cyllene,  the  highest  altitude  in  all 
Arcadia,  and  the  home  of  all-white  black  birds. 

There  would  seem  to  have  been  a  tacit  understanding 
that  the  Olympian  home  of  the  gods  must  be  reserved 
entirely  for  grown-ups,  as  there  is  no  account  of  any 
accouchement  that  occurred  in  the  heaven  of  the  heathen. 

The  stork  of  the  goddesses  usually  selected  some  local- 
ity near  a  convenient  spring  on  a  faraway  mountain, 
where  no  infant  cries  could  disturb  the  councils  or  the 
conversation  of  the  adult  divinities  in  Olympus. 

The  cup  bearer  Ganymede,  and  Cupid,  appear  to  have 
been  the  only  small  people  allowed  in  the  paradise  of 
Mythology;  and  Cupid,  always  represented  in  diminutive 
form  at  all  stages  of  his  existence,  was  in  effect  not  a 
youngster,  but  a  mature  and  mischievous  dwarf  divinity. 

The  springs  are  possibly  still  somewhere  in  the  hills 
south  of  the  village  of  Fonia  and  west  of  the  mountain 
called  Skipezi,  the  Pheneus  and  the  Geronteum  of 
Pausanias. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  i6. 


a  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

4 
CEnoe 

CEnoe's  Well  was  fifteen  stadia  from  Pheneus,  and  near 
the  tomb  of  Chalcodon. 

The  Nymph  OEnoe  was  the  nurse  of  Pan,  and  probably 
acted  at  some  time  in  the  same  capacity  for  Zeus  as  there 
was  in  the  temple  at  Tegea  a  carving  representing  her  in 
charge  of  that  god  while  he  was  still  a  babe. 

Pan  the  son  of  Hermes  was  born  perfectly  developed 
and  neither  grew  nor  changed  in  appearance  afterwards. 
His  mother  fled  in  fright  when  she  saw  his  hairy  body 
with  full  size  horns,  tail  and  goat's  feet ;  but  the  gods  were 
particularly  pleased  with  his  unusual  shape,  and  had  him 
carefully  cared  for  by  Nymphs  of  whom  CEnoe  was  his 
special  and  private  nurse. 

As  Pan's  principal  seats  of  worship  were  in  Arcadia,  it 
may  be  assumed  that  he  was  born  in  that  district,  and 
perhaps  at  this  Well;  it  being  apparently  a  nurse's  per- 
quisite to  have  her  name  bestowed  on  the  natal  Spring, 
as  in  the  cases  of  the  nurses  Neda,  Hagno,  and  others. 

This  Spring  was  northeast  of  and  about  two  miles 
from  where  the  village  of  Fonia  is  now  located. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  26. 


5 
Tritonis 

Zeus  having  been  born  in  Arcadia,  and  his  brother 
Poseidon,  and  his  son  Hermes,  he  was  inevitably  drawn 
to  that  district  when  the  most  wonderful  of  all  known 
births  was  about  to  take  place — the  birth  of  Athena  from 
the  head  of  Zeus,  more  sensational  even  than  the  so- 
called  birth  of  Bacchus  from  the  Thunderer's  thigh  would 


ARCADIA  9 

have  been  if  Semele  had  not,  before  that,  presented  the 
world  with  her  fully  formed  infant. 

The  marvel  occurred  at  the  fountain  of  Tritonis  where 
afterwards  was  founded  the  town  of  Aliphera,  named  in 
honor  of  Alipherus,  one  of  Lycaon's  sons. 

The  town  had  a  temple  of  Athena,  and  a  statue  of  her 
in  bronze,  of  large  size  and  of  artistic  merit,  for  they 
accorded  her  the  most  worship  inasmuch  as  she  was  born 
and  reared  in  that  locality.  They  also  celebrated  a  public 
festival  for  the  goddess. 

That  Athena,  armed  cap-a-pie,  sprang  from  the  head 
of  Jove  is  common  knowledge  imbibed  so  early  that  few 
pause  to  wonder  how  she  got  into  the  god's  head  or  to 
inquire  about  the  details  of  the  birth. 

As  to  the  first  query,  it  was  through  the  family  fond- 
ness for  eating  people. 

Jove,  inheriting  the  cannibalistic  proclivities  of  his 
father,  devoured  his  first  wife  Metis,  and  at  the  momen- 
tous time  he  solicited  the  good  offices  of  Hephaestus,  who, 
well  known  as  a  blacksmith  under  his  more  frequently 
used  name  of  Vulcan,  merely  exchanged  his  sledge  for  an 
axe,  and  deftly  made  an  opening  in  Zeus'  skull  through 
which  Athena  immediately  leapt  with  a  hearty  yell  that 
indicates  that  Zeus  was  not  the  only  one  to  feel  the  force 
of  the  axe's  impact. 

In  the  Temple  of  Diana  Alpheionia  there  was  a  picture 
by  the  Corinthian  painter  Cleanthes  depicting  the  birth 
of  Athena,  the  Minerva  of  the  Romans,  and  the  subject 
was  still  more  grandly  portrayed  by  Phidias  in  the 
sculptured  front  of  the  Parthenon  on  the  Acropolis  at 
Athens. 

It  was  disputed  whether  Tritonis  refers  to  the  date  of 
the  birth,  the  third  of  the  month  which  was  August;  or  to 
an  old  word  "  trito  "  meaning  head;  and  there  was  hardly 


10  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

any  place  having  a  Spring,  or  any  body  of  water,  called 
Tritonis,  that  did  not  claim  to  be  Athena's  birthplace. 
Ruins  found  on  a  hill  called  Nerovitza  are  said  to  be 
those  of  Aliphera. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  26. 


6 

Linus 

The  Spring  of  Linus,  or  Lechnus,  was  regarded  with 
great  favor  by  prospective  mothers  who  believed  that  its 
waters  might  be  employed  to  insure  the  well-being  of 
children  in  the  early  stage  of  their  development. 

Linus  was,  according  to  one  account,  a  son  of  Hermes 
and  the  Arcadians  may  possibly  have  claimed  that  his 
birth  took  place  at  this  Spring. 

He  ranked  with  Orpheus  and  Musaeus  as  musician  and 
composer,  and  that  Apollo  killed  him  after  a  musical 
contest,  as  he  killed  Marsyas,  might  be  considered  good 
evidence  of  his  ability. 

No  clue  seems  to  be  extant  as  to  the  precise  location  of 
this  Spring. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  7. 


7 
Mt.  Elaion 

The  town  of  Phigalia  was  surrounded  by  mountains; 
on  the  left  was  Cotilius,  and  on  the  right  Elaion,  which 
was  thirty  stadia  from  the  town.  On  the  second  moun- 
tain a  warm  Spring  bubbled  up  in  a  grove  of  oak  trees 
that  concealed  a  cavern  called  the  Cave  of  Black  Demeter 
because  the  goddess,  when  she  was  grieving  over  the  pony 


ARCADIA  II 

Arion  that  belonged  to  Poseidon,  went  into  mourning, 
appareled  herself  in  black,  and  retired  for  a  period  to  the 
cave  behind  the  Spring. 

The  effect  of  Rhea's  deceit  in  describing  Poseidon  to 
Cronus  as  a  foal  would  almost  seem  to  have  had  an  in- 
fluence upon  the  god's  very  existence,  and  to  have  con- 
nected him  with  horses  in  several  ways  that  are  quite 
foreign  to  the  conception  of  him  as  the  ruling  divinity  of 
the  sea. 

If  such  was  really  the  case,  it  was  but  natural  that 
when  he  desired  to  disguise  himself  he  should  have  as- 
sumed the  shape  of  a  handsome  horse,  as  he  did  before 
the  birth  of  Arion,  which  colt  according  to  one  account 
was  the  pony  that  appeared  out  of  the  shaft  of  the  salt 
Well  that  Poseidon  opened  at  Athens  in  his  contest  with 
Athena  for  the  title  to  that  valuable  piece  of  real  estate. 

At  the  village  of  Tragoi  near  the  ruins  of  Phigalia, 
French  explorers  found  remains  of  baths  whose  masonry 
clearly  showed  the  action  of  warm  waters,  but  their 
sources,  it  was  reported,  had  become  dry  in  some  distant 
period.  ,   arti   • 

;   Demeter,  a  sister  of  Zeus,  was  the  Ceres  of  the  Romans. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  42. 

8 
Tegea 

In  very  ancient  times,  before  the  Trojan  war,  there 
was  at  Tegea  a  venerable  temple  to  Athena  Alea,  and 
north  of  it  there  was  a  Spring  near  which  Hercules  in  his 
rather  rough  way  wooed  the  daughter  of  Aleus,  Auge  who 
became  the  mother  of  Telephus. 

Her  father  Aleus,  not  flattered  by  the  rose  covered 
alliance,  enclosed  the  mother  and  son  in  a  chest  which 


12  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

he  threw  into  the  sea.  The  Ocean,  however,  opposing 
the  plans  of  the  heartless  parent,  safely  floated  the  human 
cargo  to  the  shores  of  Asia  Minor  where  Teuthras  the 
king  of  the  Mysians  married  the  mother  and  brought  up 
the  son  who  in  due  time  succeeded  his  adootive  father  as 
ruler  of  the  kingdom. 

Telephus  was  wounded  by  Achilles  at  Troy  and  his 
cure  is  perhaps  the  first  instance  on  record  of  the  applica- 
tion of  the  Similia  Similibus  Curantur  system  of  healing, 
for  he  recovered  from  the  hurt  on  being  treated  with  the 
rust  of  the  spear  that  spitted  him. 

The  old  structure  at  Tegea  having  been  consumed  by 
fire  was  superseded  by  a  new  and  magnificent  temple  that 
excelled  all  other  temples  in  the  Peloponnesus  for  beauty 
and  size.  It  combined  Doric,  Corinthian  and  Ionic  archi- 
tecture, and  was  designed  by  Scopas,  the  Parian. 

The  temple  contained  at  one  time  much  that  was  of 
unusual  interest,  but  one  conqueror  after  another,  follow- 
ing a  long-used  custom,  carried  off  the  best  that  the  pred- 
ecessor had  left.  Augustus  took  away  the  ancient  statue 
of  the  goddess  for  whom  the  temple  was  erected,  to 
beautify  his  forum  at  Rome.  He  also  abstracted  the 
tusks  of  the  Calydonian  boar,  one  of  which  was  suspended 
in  Caesar's  gardens,  in  the  temple  of  Dionysus,  and  was 
two  and  a  half  feet  in  length.  The  hide  of  the  boar  was 
also  preserved  in  the  temple  and  was  allowed  to  remain 
only  because  it  had  rotted  with  the  lapse  of  time  and  was 
nearly  devoid  of  hair. 

The  despoilers  left  the  bed  of  Athena,  and  also  the 
armor  of  the  widow  Marpessa  who  led  a  company  of 
women  and  won  a  battle  against  the  Lacedaemonians 
under  King  Cherillus. 

Few  Romans  of  leisure  or  patriotism,  however,  could 
have  been  found  without  affection  for  Arcadia,  or  a 


ARCADIA  1.3 

perhaps  pardonable  desire  to  have  a  souvenir  of  the  dis- 
trict which  cradled  one  ancestor  of  Rome  and  coffined 
the  other,  Evander  and  Anchises. 

Evander  the  son  of  Hercules  and  a  Nymph,  the  daugh- 
ter of  Lado,  lived  at  Pallantium  a  short  distance  from 
Tegea.  Sixty  years  before  the  Trojan  war  he  went  from 
his  home  with  a  force  of  fellow  villagers  and  founded 
another  Pallantium  in  Italy,  on  the  River  Tiber  where 
Rome  is  now.  Time  and  tongues  changed  the  name  to 
Palatium,  and  then  to  Palatine  which  one  of  the  seven 
hills  still  bears. 

Pallantivun  raised  a  temple  to  Evander,  and  the  elder 
Antonine  paid  the  place  the  homage  of  an  Empire  by 
raising  it  from  a  village  to  a  town,  and  exempting  it  from 
taxes. 

Tegea  was  some  three  miles  southeast  of  the  present 
town  Tripolitza. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  47. 


9 

Leuconius 

Leucone  was  the  aunt  of  Auge  whose  romance  with 
Hercules,  and  subsequent  vicissitudes,  have  been  men- 
tioned. There  was  a  Well  near  Tegea  called,  after  her, 
Leuconius. 

Leucone's  father  Aphidas  ruled  over  Tegea  and  the 
territory  in  its  neighborhood;  he  was  a  grandson  of  Cal- 
listo,  and  was  the  father  of  Auge's  father  Aleus  who  was 
Leucone's  brother. 

No  author  extant  seems  to  have  made  mention  of  the 
incident  that  led  to  connecting  the  name  of  the  princess 
with  the  Well. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  44. 


14  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 


10 

The  Blacksmith's  Well 

Many  interesting  and  some  valuable  discoveries  have 
been  made  in  the  digging  of  wells. 

Lycurgus,  while  acting  as  guardian  for  his  nephew 
Leobotas,  king  of  Sparta,  having  given  the  Lacedaemon- 
ians new  laws  and  changed  their  customs,  they  prospered 
rapidly  and  in  time  became  eager  to  show  their  superior- 
ity by  conquests. 

They  questioned  the  oracle  as  to  where  they  should 
begin  their  campaign;  and  the  reply  they  received  was 
that  the  oracle  would  give  them  Tegea  to  measure  out  by 
the  rod. 

They  therefore  sent  an  army  against  the  Tegeans  and, 
in  perfect  confidence  as  to  the  result,  the  army  was 
supplied  with  fetters  enough  to  secure  and  enslave  all  of 
the  vanquished  they  might  capture. 

The  Spartans,  however,  on  that  occasion  were  worsted, 
and  the  Tegeans  after  fastening  them  with  their  own 
fetters  set  them  to  work  measuring  fields  with  rods,  as 
the  oracle  had  predicted.  The  fetters  that  were  then 
used  were  preserved  and  were  still  to  be  seen  in  the  temple 
at  Tegea  many  centuries  later. 

The  Lacedaemonians,  on  consulting  the  oracle  again, 
were  told  that  it  would  be  necessary  for  them  to  find  the 
bones  of  Orestes  before  they  could  conquer  the  Tegeans. 

Orestes,  the  one  who  had  murdered  his  mother  Cly- 
temnestra,  and  whose  friendship  with  Pylades  is  paral- 
leled only  by  that  of  Damon  with  Pythias,  had  been  a 
king  of  the  Lacedaemonians.  He  was  killed  by  the  bite 
of  an  Arcadian  snake  in  the  century  of  the  Trojan  war, 
and,  as  during  the  intervening  four  hundred  years  all 
trace  of  his  sepulchre  had  been  lost,  it  became  necessary 


ARCADIA  ji-5 

to  make  another  application  to  Delphi,  and  that  brought 
the  answer  that  they  were  to  be  found  where  two  winds 
by  hard  compulsion  blow;  and  stroke  answers  stroke,  and 
woe  lies  on  woe. 

Search  was  made  everywhere,  but  unavailingly  until 
one  day  a  Spartan  named  Lichas,  who  was  watching  in 
palpable  wonder  the  effects  a  blacksmith  was  producing 
at  his  forge,  attracted  the  attention  of  the  worker  who 
said  to  him  that  he  could  show  him  something  even  more 
wonderful  than  the  transformation  he  was  watching, 
something  he  had  found  while  he  was  digging  his  Well. 
This  proved  to  be  a  coffin  nearly  eleven  feet  long  which 
contained  a  skeleton  of  proportionate  size;  and  Lichas, 
piecing  together  the  different  facts,  concluded  that  the 
winds  of  the  bellows,  the  anvil  and  the  hammer,  and  the 
iron  (as  a  weapon)  a  woe  to  mankind,  all  agreed  with  the 
oracle's  description — and  he  surmised  that  the  huge  coffin 
contained  the  very  bones  that  all  Sparta  was  in  search  of. 

After  many  subterfuges,  the  Spartans  having  osten- 
tatiously banished  Lichas  in  order  that  he  might  seem  to 
have  an  excuse  for  taking  up  his  residence  in  Tegea,  he 
managed  to  rob  the  blacksmith  of  the  bones  and  carry 
them  to  Sparta.  The  result  was  an  immediate  change 
in  the  luck  and  fortunes  of  the  Lacedaemonians  who  not 
only  became  superior  to  the  Tegeans  but  were  able  to 
subdue  the  greater  part  of  Peloponnesus. 

The  search  for  the  bones  was  a  long  one,  but  it  was 
continued  with  true  Spartan  pertinacity  as  more  than 
two  tedious  centuries  elapsed  between  the  fettering  of 
the  Spartans  and  their  defeat  of  the  Tegeans  in  560  B.C. 
when  the  bones  found  in  the  Well  had  become  their 
talisman. 

Tegea  was  one  of  the  oldest  towns  of  Arcadia,  and  re- 
ceived its  name  from  Tegeates  a  son  of  Lycaon;  but  there 


i6  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

are  now  hardly  any  remains  of  it  visible,  and  neither  the 
Well  of  the  Blacksmith  nor  the  long-cherished  fetters  are 
among  them. 

Herodotus;  I.  67. 

II 

A  Well  at  Phigalia 

Hercules  and  Lepreus  had  a  friendly  contest  to  see 
which  could  draw  the  most  water  from  a  Well  before  be- 
coming exhausted. 

This  trial  resulted  in  the  death  of  Lepreus,  and,  as  he 
was  buried  at  Phigalia,  in  the  southwestern  part  of 
Arcadia,  it  is  probable  that  the  Well  was  in  that  town;  a 
location  that  is  also  indicated  by  another  feature  which 
was  introduced  into  the  contest  to  determine  which  one 
could  outeat  the  other,  for  the  Phigalians  were  notorious 
for  their  excesses  at  table  and,  among  themselves,  rated  a 
man's  valiancy  according  to  the  amount  of  food  he  could 
consume. 

Admirers  of  Hercules  claimed  that  he  showed  more 
wonderful  power  in  what  he  did  for  pleasure  at  the  court 
of  King  Thestius,  and  in  eating  whenever  opportunity 
offered,  than  he  exhibited  in  any  of  his  twelve  compulsory 
labors;  but,  although  the  cormorant  had  been  assigned 
to  him  as  a  symbol  of  his  voracity,  Hercules  was  not  able 
to  eat  an  ox  any  sooner  than  Lepreus  did.  He,  however, 
easily  won  the  contest  at  the  Well,  as  also  that  with  the 
discus  and  in  a  drinking  bout,  and,  at  the  end,  in  a  per- 
sonal combat,  in  the  course  of  which  Lepreus  lost  his  life. 
This  Well  has  no  doubt  been  filled  in  by  the  ruins  of 
Phigalia  of  which  only  some  traces  of  walls  are  left  near 
the  village  of  PavHtza  on  the  banks  of  the  Neda. 

Athenseus;  X.  2. 
PausaniaB;  V.  5. 


ARCADIA  .  17 


12 

The  Jay's  Well 

Thirty  stadia  from  the  town  of  Methydrium  there  was 
a  Spring  on  the  side  of  Mt.  Ostracina,  and  not  far  from  it 
a  cave  where  Alcimedon  used  to  dwell. 

He  had  a  daughter  Phialo  who  unknown  to  her  father 
contracted  an  alliance  with  Hercules  and  who  was  driven 
from  the  cave  with  her  son  ^chmagoras  as  soon  as  the 
child  was  born.  She  was  bound  to  a  tree  on  the  mountain 
in  sight  of  the  Spring,  and  the  sudden  transfer  from  the 
warmth  of  the  cave  caused  the  baby  to  wail  in  discomfort 
for  several  hours.  An  imitative  Jay  learning  the  iterated 
wail  repeated  it  so  naturally  as  he  flitted  about  that 
Hercules,  searching  the  forest  for  Phialo,  took  the  bird's 
voice  for  the  child's,  and  following  the  sound  was  led 
to  the  Spring  and  freed  the  mother  from  her  bonds 
with  I  little  time  to  spare  to  save  the  life  of  the  boy. 
And  from  that  occurrence  the  Well  was  called  after  the 
bird. 

They  who  attributed  the  infant's  rescue  to  the  mimick- 
ing of  a  Magpie  called  the  Well  Cissa. 

Methydrium  is  supposed  to  have  been  somewhere 
within  ten  miles  of  the  village  of  Nimnitza  in  a  south- 
easterly direction. 

Pausanias;  VIIL  12. 


13 

Lymax  River 

The  opportunity  that  Arcadia  offered  streams  to  fall 
into  the  ground  at  one  place  only  to  be  forced  up  again 
at  another  gave  rise  to  differences  of  opinion  about  the 
real  source  of  the  River  Lymax.     It  was  said  by  one 


1 8  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

writer  to  come  from  a  Spring  on  Mt.  Cotilius  forty  stadia 
from  Phigalia. 

Another  authority,  however,  disputed  that  statement 
because  the  water  from  that  Spring  flowed  only  a  short 
distance  and  then  dropped  out  of  sight.  But  unfor- 
tunately he  neither  advanced  any  view  of  his  own  as  to 
where  the  Lymax  rose,  nor  made  any  inquiry  about  the 
matter  in  the  neighborhood  where  the  question  might 
have  been  settled,  for  after  running  only  twelve  stadia 
from  Phigalia  the  Lymax  definitively  came  to  an  end  by 
drowning  itself  in  the  river  Neda,  not  far  from  where 
there  were  some  hot  baths. 

The  Lymax  was  so  called  because  Rhea  threw  the 
lymata  into  it  after  the  birth  of  Zeus  at  the  Spring  of  Neda. 

The  Spring  of  the  short  stream  has  been  located  in  a 
wild  and  desolate  glen  on  the  mountain  a  half  mile  south- 
west of  a  temple  of  Apollo,  one  of  the  best  preserved 
fanes  of  Greece,  the  frieze  of  which  is  now  in  the  British 
Museum. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  41. 


Melangeia 

The  Springs  of  Melangeia  were  on  the  western  side  of 
Mt.  Alesium,  by  the  road  called  Climax  which  ran  from 
Argos  to  Mantineia  along  the  banks  of  the  River  Inachus. 

The  waters  of  the  Springs  were  carried  to  Mantineia 
by  an  aqueduct  some  portions  of  which  have  survived 
to  the  present  time. 

Their  site  is  marked  by  the  modern  village  of  Pikerni, 
an  Albanian  word  that  is  translated  as  "Abounding  io 
Springs." 

Pausanias;  VIII.  6.  . ;"•.''{- 


ARCADIA  J^ 


15 
Mt.  Alesium 

Mt.  Alesium  rose  above  the  town  of  Mantineia,  and  at 
the  extreme  end  of  the  mountain  a  temple  of  Poseidon 
had  been  erected  in  early  times  by  Trophonius,  of  oracle 
fame,  and  his  brother.     (See  No.  137.) 

One  of  the  numerous  marvels  of  Arcadia  was  a  sea 
water  Spring  in  this  temple  on  a  mountain  in  the  center 
of  a  country  that  had  not  a  single  inch  of  sea  coast. 

The  salt  beds  of  Silesia  or  Syracuse,  and  their  cause, 
were  unknown  in  those  days,  and  a  salt  water  Spring 
then  could  only  be  a  flow  from  the  ocean;  and  this  Spring 
was  therefore  looked  upon  as  supernatural. 

The  temple,  as  usual,  was  in  ruins,  but  the  Emperor 
Adrian  regarded  them  and  the  Spring  with  so  much  ven- 
eration that  he  had  a  new  temple  built  around  the  old 
one,  with  strict  orders  that  no  portion  of  the  old  ruins 
should  be  disturbed. 

In  view  of  the  awesome  Spring  and  the  commands  of 
the  Emperor,  it  was  thought  sufficient  to  stretch  a  string 
about  the  new  construction  work  to  keep  intruders  out. 

But  one  spectator,  ^Epytus,  impelled  by  bravado, 
boldly  broke  the  string  and  passed  the  forbidden  bound- 
ary, only  to  be  stricken  blind  by  the  outraged  god  who 
caused  the  salt  water  to  spurt  into  the  eyes  of  the  impious 
intruder. 

Pausanias;  VIII.' lo. 


16 

Well  of  Alalcomenea 

Near  and  northerly  from  the  ruins  of  the  old  town  of 
Mantineia  was  the  Well  of  Alalcomenea. 


20  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

In  its  neighborhood  reposed  the  dust  of  two  of  the 
ancient  world's  prominent  characters,  in  the  tomb  of 
Penelope ;  and  in  the  sepulchre  of  Anchises,  the  father  of 
^neas,  who,  after  his  famous  escape  pickaback  from  the 
Trojan  conflagration,  separated  for  some  reason  from 
i^neas  and  going  to  Arcadia  died  there  and  was  buried 
at  the  foot  of  the  mountain  thereafter  called  Anchisia. 

With  Penelope's  resting  place  there  was  connected  a 
little-known  story  of  that  patient  lady's  last  days;  to  the 
effect  that  Odysseus  after  his  return  from  Troy  accused 
her  of  having  encouraged  the  host  of  notorious  suitors 
that  nearly  eat  him  out  of  house  and  home,  and,  not- 
withstanding her  tearful  denials,  drove  her  away,  un- 
mindful of  Circe,  Calypso,  and  Enippe  the  mother  of 
more  than  a  dozen  of  his  children.  After  wandering  dis- 
tractedly from  place  to  place  she  migrated  to  Mantineia 
where  she  died  and  was  buried. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  12. 


17 

Well  of  Orchomenus 

Beyond  the  tomb  of  Anchises  and  on  the  top  of  a  hill 
was  the  old  town  of  Orchomenus,  below  which  the  newer 
town  was  built. 

Among  its  notable  sights  were  this  Well  from  which 
they  got  their  water,  and  the  temples  of  Poseidon  and  of 
Aphrodite ;  and  a  wooden  statue  of  Artemis  set  in  a  large 
cedar  tree ! 

The  village  of  Kalpaki  now  occupies  the  site  of  the  old 
lower  town,  and  just  below  it  is  a  copious  fountain  that 
is  still  a  notable  sight. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  13. 


ARCADIA  21 


i8 
The  Wells  Called  Tene.e 

The  Wells  called  Teneae  were  beyond  Orchomenus  and 
the  tombs  of  Anchises  and  King  Aristocrates;  the  king 
was  stoned  to  death  in  640  B.C.  by  his  subjects,  the  Or- 
chomenians;  the  cause  of  the  demise  of  Anchises  in  Ar- 
cadia is  not  given,  but  his  death  in  Asia  Minor  was 
attributed  to  lightning. 

Some  distance  beyond  the  Wells,  the  road  passed  a 
bubbling  Fountain  in  a  ravine  at  the  end  of  which  was 
the  town  of  Caryae,  the  site  of  which  is  still  in  dispute 
though  there  are  perhaps  few  cities  in  the  world  that  do 
not  possess  several  statues  of  the  ancient  town's  inhabit- 
ants which  are  seen  wherever  columns  are  carved  in  the 
form  of  females;  such  caryatides  represent  the  women  of 
Caryae  who  were  all  doomed  to  slavery  and  the  support 
of  others,  in  punishment  for  the  adherence  of  the  people 
to  the  Persians  after  the  battle  of  Thermopylae.  All  of 
the  men  of  the  town  were  killed  by  the  loyal  Greeks  of  the 
neighborhood. 

The  various  sites  that  have  been  assigned  to  Caryae  are 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Arakhova. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  13. 


19 

NoNACRis,  Water  of  the  Styx 

On  the  road  northeast  from  Pheneus  lay  the  ruins  of 
Nonacris,  a  small  place  that  took  name  from  the  wife  of 
Lycaon;  but  even  in  the  dawn  of  the  Christian  Era  it 
was  difficult  to  trace  any  portion  of  the  ruins. 

Beyond  some  vestiges  of  them,  however,  a  very  high 


22  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

cliff  overhung  the  river  Crathis,  and  from  that  cliff  a 
Spring  of  poisonous  water  dripped  drop  by  drop  upon  a 
natural  shelf  of  stone  below  it,  and  oozing  through  the 
shelf  fell  at  intervals  into  the  river  that  ran  beneath. 

Those  drops  the  Greeks  called  the  Water  of  the  Styx ; 
they  were  deadly  both  to  man  and  beast,  so  that  to  have 
"taken  a  draught  of  the  Styx"  became  one  of  the  many 
early  euphemisms  for  physical  dissolution. 

The  constant  dripping  wore  a  hollow  in  the  shelf  of 
stone  large  enough  to  accommodate  some  small  fish  that 
were  as  deadly  as  the  water;  and,  to  protect  both  the 
hungry  and  the  thirsty  from  this  death  trap,  the  hollow 
was  surrounded  with  a  fence  of  masonry. 

Glass  and  crystal  and  porcelain;  and  articles  made  of 
stone;  and  pottery,  were  broken  by  the  water.  And 
things  made  of  horn,  bone,  iron,  brass,  lead,  tin,  silver, 
and  amber  melted  when  put  into  that  water.  Gold  also 
suffered  from  it. 

A  horse's  hoof  alone,  or  a  mule's  was  proof  against  the 
water  of  the  Styx. 

Homer  when  speaking  of  the  Styx  usually  refers  to  the 
river  which  issued  from  a  rock  in  Hades ;  but  in  his  oath 
of  Hera  the  water  of  the  Styx  she  swears  by  is  none  other 
than  this  water  near  the  ruins  of  Nonacris,  for  as  used  by 
the  gods  it  formed  the  original  acid  test ;  besides  playing 
havoc  with  containers  of  all  kinds,  it  had  mysterious  and 
uncanny  properties  that  made  it  the  bane  of  even  the 
gods  themselves.  It  was  exceedingly  cold  and  could 
throw  a  divinity  into  a  stupor  that  lasted  a  year;  and, 
when  a  quarrel  arose  among  the  immortals  and  the  ver- 
acity of  one  of  them  was  impugned,  it  was  the  custom  of 
Jove  to  send  Iris  with  a  golden  ewer  for  the  cold  and  im- 
perishable water  of  Styx,  which  on  her  return  was  made 
use  of  as  an  infallible  test  for  truth.    If  the  statement, 


ARCADIA  ^ 

repeated  on  oath  over  the  surface  of  the  water,  was  false, 
the  perjurer  lay  breathless  for  the  following  twelve 
months.  Then  more  and  severer  troubles  ensued,  one 
after  the  other,  and  the  deceitful  divinity  was  exiled 
from  the  gods'  councils  and  feasts  during  a  period  of 
nine  years. 

The  water  was  said  to  be  good  during  the  day  and  to 
exert  its  evil  effects  at  night. 

There  was  an  old  tradition  that  Alexander  the  Great 
died  from  this  poisonous  water.  Voltaire  following 
Pliny  asserts  that  Aristotle  sent  a  bottle  of  it  to  Alex- 
ander; that  it  was  extremely  cold,  and  that  he  who 
drank  of  it  instantly  died,  and  he  adds,  with  unnoticed 
nullification,  that  Alexander  drank  of  it  and  died  in  six 
days. 

Alexander's  death  before  the  age  of  33  is  commonly 
attributed  to  excessive  wine  drinking,  he  having,  with 
twenty  guests  at  table,  drunk  to  the  health  of  every  per- 
son in  the  company  and  then  pledged  them  severally. 

After  that,  calling  for  Hercules'  cup,  which  held  six 
bottles,  he  quaffed  all  its  contents  and  even  drained  it  a 
second  time;  then,  falling  to  the  floor,  he  was  seized  with 
a  violent  fever  which  ended  in  death. 

There  is  also  another  version  to  the  effect  that  Cas- 
sander,  the  eldest  of  Antipater's  sons,  brought  from 
Greece  a  poison  that  lolas  his  younger  brother  threw 
into  Alexander's  huge  cup,  of  which  he  was  the  bearer, 
and  that  this  poison  was  the  acrimonious  and  corroding 
distillation  from  the  cliff  above  the  Crathis,  and  was 
brought  from  Greece  to  Babylon  for  its  horrid  purpose 
in  a  vessel  made  out  of  the  hoof  of  a  mule. 

Leake  conjectures  that  Nonacris  may  have  occupied 
the  site  of  modern  Mesorougi,  where  two  slender  cas- 
cades dropping  500  feet,  as  Pausanias  said,  from  the 


24  GREECE;   PELOPONNESUS 

highest  precipice  in  Greece,  unite  and  flow  into  the  Cra- 
this  River. 

The  present  day  inhabitants  of  the  neighborhood  speak 
of  the  streams  as  The  Black  Waters  and  The  Terrible 
Waters,  and  still  attribute  to  them  some  of  the  un- 
canny properties  with  which  they  were  endowed  by  the 
ancients. 

It  is  some  slight  relief  from  the  gloom  engendered  by 
reading  about  this  doleful  neighborhood  to  find  that  it 
also  produced  something  to  mitigate  evil ;  that  being  the 
Moly  plant  which  had  the  power  of  neutralizing  the 
effects  of  the  most  potent  sorcerer's  spells.  Whether  or 
not  this  marvelous  plant  grew  anywhere  except  in 
Homer's  imagination,  the  name  is  still  applied  to  what  is 
also  called  Sorcerer's  Garlic. 

Strabo;  VIII,  8.  Pausanias;  VIII.  17-18.  Ovid;  Metamorphoses;  XV. 
In  333. 


20 

The  Spring  of  M^nalus 

If  the  power  of  the  Moly  plant  had  not  been  limited 
no  transformation  would  have  occurred  at  the  Holm-oak 
Spring  of  Maenalus,  and  there  would  have  been  a  less 
brilliant  conclusion  to  the  tale  of  Callisto,  the  nymph  of 
Nonacris,  which,  written  in  those  stars  that  never  set  in 
the  north  temperate  zone,  may  nightly  be  read  in  the 
unclouded  sky. 

It  was  due  to  more  than  personal  eccentricity  that 
Callisto  was  the  most  favored  nymph  in  Diana's  virgin 
train,  for  even  Jupiter  regarded  her  with  more  than 
ordinary  favor,  and  accorded  her  unusual  attentions. 

One  day,  having  hunted  in  the  woods  a  thousand 
beasts  of  the  chase,  the  weary  and  heated  party  came 


s 


ARCADIA  25. 

shortly  after  noon  to  a  sacred  grove  on  Mt.  Maenalus,  a 
grove  thick  with  many  a  Holm-oak  which  no  generation 
had  ever  cut,  and  in  the  midst  of  which  there  was  a 
Spring  of  ice  cold  water  whence  a  stream  ran  flowing  with 
its  murmuring  noise,  and  borne  along  the  sand  worn  fine 
by  its  action. 

Diana,  calling  upon  her  train  to  follow  her  example, 
impetuously  plunged  into  the  refreshing  waters;  and  only 
Callisto  was  tardy  in  joining  in  the  revels. 

Diana,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  angered  beyond 
the  limits  of  friendship,  ordered  her  to  leave  the  throng 
and  never  more  rejoin  the  virgin  troup. 

Misfortunes  often  lockstep  in  their  eagerness  to  over- 
take their  victim,  and  hardly  had  some  months  of  modera- 
tion come  to  poor  Callisto's  grief,  when  angry  Juno  began 
to  overwhelm  her  with  a  wifely  rage,  going  even  to  the 
extent  of  personal  chastisement,  during  which  she  caught 
her  by  the  hair,  threw  her  on  the  ground,  and,  crying, 
"I  will  spoil  that  shape  of  thine  by  which,  mischievous 
one,  thou  didst  charm  my  husband, "  changed  her  into  a 
shaggy  she-bear. 

As  such  she  wandered  through  the  woods  for  fifteen 
years,  until  a  day  when  her  own  son.  Areas,  scanning  the, 
thickets  for  game,  espied  her  bulky  form. 

He  had  drawn  his  bow  to  nigh  its  full  extent,  and  with 
unerring  aim,  was  all  unconsciously  about  to  kill  his. 
mother,  when  Jove  snatched  them  both  away  and 
placed  them,  carried  through  vacant  space  with  a 
rapid  wind,  in  the  heavens  and  made  them  neighboring 
constellations. 

Juno,  made  still  more  furious  at  this  elevation,  tried 
in  vain  to  get  the  act  annulled.  Then  she  visited  the 
Ocean,  and  said,  "Another  has  possession  of  Heaven  in 
my  stead.     May  I  be  deemed  untruthful  if,  when  the 


26  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

night  has  made  the  world  dark,  you  see  not  in  the 
highest  part  of  heaven  stars  but  lately  thus  honored  to 
my  affliction;  there  where  the  least  and  most  limited 
circle  surrounds  the  extreme  part  of  the  axis  of  the 
world." 

And  Ocean  at  her  entreaty  agreed  never  to  let  the 
bears  bathe  in  his  waters.  Hence  the  mariners  of 
the  Mediterranean  have  with  Milton  oft  outwatched 
the  Bear  that  never  sets  upon  that  sea. 

Perhaps  there  were  few  more  useful  fancies  among  the 
ancients  than  those  which,  by  linking  a  pleasing  conceit 
with  a  constellation,  foster  an  interest  in  astronomy,  and 
start  and  cement  an  acquaintance  with  the  celestial 
spheres.  And  it  might  be  wished  that  no  one  had  ever 
attempted  to  lessen  the  interest  in  such  myths,  by  the 
easy  and  wide  amplification  of  the  very  prosaic  cat-and- 
canary  idea  that  a  change  into  an  animal  is  merely  a 
mode  of  saying  that  someone  has  been  devoured,  a  theory 
that  should  not  be  applied,  especially  in  the  case  of 
Callisto;  for  the  unfortunate  girl  inherited  the  tendency, 
her  Father  Lycaon  having  changed  into  a  wolf. 

Callisto's  family  made  Arcadia;  her  grandfather  Pelas- 
gus  was  its  first  settler,  indigenous  and  brought  forth  by 
Black  Earth.  He  was  a  man  of  ideas  and  initiative,  the 
inventor  of  huts  and  pigskin  clothing.  He  also  intro- 
duced refinements  in  food,  and  taught  his  people  the 
superiority  of  acorns  over  grass. 

Lycaon,  his  son  (contemporary  with  Cecrops),  Cal- 
listo's father,  made  greater  improvements  and  built  the 
first  town,  Lycosura. 

Under  her  son  Areas  the  country  made  further  ad- 
vances; he  introduced  corn  and  bread,  and  taught  spin- 
ning and  weaving;  and  Arcadia  is  the  land  of  Areas. 

Callisto's  youngest  brother  CEnotrus  was  the  first  to 


ARCADIA  2^ 

found  a  Grecian  colony  abroad,  and  became  King  of 
CEnotria  in  Italy. 

And  for  a  long  time  other  members  of  her  family, 
female  as  well  as  male,  supplied  names  for  towns,  and  for 
natural  features  in  the  home  district  of  Arcadia. 

Near  the  ruins  of  Maenalus  there  was  a  "winter  tor- 
rent" called  Elaphus,  which  may  have  been  the  "ice-cold 
water"  through  which  Diana  learned  Callisto's  secret. 

There  are  differing  conjectures  about  the  position 
Maenalus  occupied,  but  several  agree  in  surmising  that 
it  was  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Helisson  River  opposite 
the  village  of  Davia. 

Ovid.     Metamorphoses;  II.  Fable    5.     Ovid.    Fasti;  Jl.    In   155.     Paus- 
anjas;  VIII.  1-3;  36. 


21 

Stymphelus 

The  great  grandson  of  Areas  who  was  the  son  of  Cal- 
listo  founded  the  city  of  Stymphelus  around  the  Spring 
of  that  name  and  his  own. 

This  copious  Spring  supplied  a  marsh,  a  river,  the  city, 
and  even  another  city,  for  in  later  years  the  emperor 
Adrian  conveyed  its  water  to  far-away  Corinth. 

In  winter  the  marsh  water  ran  into  the  river,  but  in 
stmimer  the  marsh  was  dry  and  the  Spring  alone  supplied 
the  current  of  the  river,  which,  with  the  characteristic 
trait  of  Arcadian  streams,  sought  and  found  a  way  into 
the  earth  and  traveled  through  it  to  Argolis,  where  on 
emerging  it  was  called  the  Erasinus. 

Another  version  about  the  marsh  was  that  it  was 
drained  in  one  day  by  a  cavity  opened  when  a  hunter, 
chasing  a  deer,  jumped  or  dived  into  the  marsh  with  all 
the  impetus  of  his  headlong  pursuit. 


28  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

The  marsh  came  into  prominence  from  its  being  the 
scene  of  the  sixth  labor  of  Hercules.  The  task  assigned 
to  him  in  this  case  was  to  destroy  the  man-eating  birds 
that  had  congregated  around  the  marsh;  they  were  lofty ^ 
cranelike,  cannibalistic  terrors,  more  powerful  than 
ostriches,  whose  straight  and  lancelike  beaks  could  pierce 
a  coat  of  mail,  and  they  were  surmised  to  have  flown  over 
from  their  native  habitat  in  Arabia. 

The  perilous  feat  of  attacking  and  overcoming  this 
savage  and  vicious  flock  was  reduced  by  the  detractors 
who  camped  on  the  trail  of  Hercules  to  a  simple  ruse — to 
frightening  them  away  with  the  noise  of  rattles,  so  that 
they  took  flight  and  probably  returned  to  their  haunts  in 
Arabia  where  perhaps  they  became  the  rocs  of  Aladdin's 
tale. 

Hercules  on  his  way  to  Colchis  with  the  Argonauts  was 
again  attacked  by  these  vicious  birds  which  flew  over  the 
Argo  and,  like  arrow  shooting  aeroplanes,  showered  the 
crew  with  sharp  pointed  feathers  from  the  security  of 
the  sky.     (See  No.  278.) 

Wooden  representations  of  the  birds  were  placed  on  the 
roof  of  the  town  temple  at  Stymphelus,  and  at  the  rear 
of  the  fane  there  were  white  stone  figures  with  birdlike 
legs  and  women's  bodies  that  were  called  Stymphelides. 
These  appeared  also  on  the  city's  coinage. 

Hera  the  wife  of  Zeus  was  said  to  have  been  reared  at 
Stymphelus  when,  after  having  been  swallowed  by  her 
father  Cronus,  she,  with  a  number  of  his  other  children, 
was  released  by  a  spasm  of  emesis  produced  by  Neptune's 
daughter  Metis.  Later,  after  her  marriage  to  Zeus,  she 
returned  to  the  town  again,  possibly  to  recover  from  the 
strain  of  being  hung  to  the  sky  with  two  anvils  tied  to 
her  heels;  or,  maybe  to  escape  some  of  the  manual 
measures  of  correction  that,  according  to  Homer,  the 


ARCADIA  2^ 

divinity  was  in  the  habit  of  frequently  threatening,  and 
sometimes  carrying  out  to  preserve  his  husbandly 
authority. 

The  ruins  of  Stymphelus  are  near  the  settlement  called 
Zaraki,  and  still  include  the  copious  Spring. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  21-22.     ApoUodorus;  I.  3,  §  6.     Iliad;  XV.,  In.  17. 


22 

The  Clitorian  Spring 

The  town  of  Clitor,  founded  by  poor  Callisto's  great- 
grandson  Clitor,  was  in  a  plain  surrounded  by  hills  of 
moderate  height,  and  the  Clitorian  fountain,  the  curiosity 
of  the  neighborhood  and  of  the  district,  rose  in  a  suburb, 
a  settlement  of  which  not  even  any  ruins  were  visible  as 
far  back  as  eighteen  hundred  years  ago. 

But  when  the  modern  exhumer  of  towns  reached  the 
locality,  the  Spring,  still  gushing  forth  from  the  hillside 
on  which  the  suburb  once  straggled,  directed  him  where 
to  dig,  and  the  long  buried  ruins  again  came  to  light  and, 
in  their  turn,  established  the  identity  of  the  fountain 
that  was  impregnated  with  the  medicines  of  Melampus 
and  became  a  curiosity  to  the  common  people  and  a 
wonder  to  the  wise,  for  even  Varro  "the  wisest  of  the 
Romans"  and  the  author  of  490  books  mentions  the 
pecuHar  quality  of  this  Spring,  which  was  such  that 
whoever  quenched  his  thrist  at  it  forthwith  hated  wine, 
and,  in  his  sobriety,  took  pleasure  only  in  pure  water. 

There  were  several  speculations  as  to  the  cause  of  the 
fountain's  remarkable  virtue,  the  most  interesting  of 
which  attributes  it  to  the  thoughtless  act  of  the  physician 
Melampus,  the  son  of  Amithaon,  who  was  called  in  to 
attend  the  four  daughters  of  Proetus,  king  of  Argos,  when 


30  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

Venus  inflicted  them  with  madness  because  they  had 
boasted  of  their  superior  beauty. 

These  lovely  young  ladies,  Mera,  Euryale,  Lysippe  and 
Iphianassa,  became  afflicted  with  the  hallucination  that 
they  were  ungainly  cows.  Melampus  treated  them  suc- 
cessfully, and  completely  restored  their  minds,  though 
the  youngest  and  prettiest  lost  her  heart  to  the  physician 
and  became  his  wife. 

In  the  treatment  of  these  cases  the  herb  hellebore  was 
employed  by  Melampus,  and  it  is,  therefore,  called 
melampodium. 

On  the  recovery  of  the  daughters,  the  unused  herbs  and 
charms  that  were  employed  in  the  cure  of  their  minds 
were  thrown  into  the  Clitorian  Spring  and  tinctured  its 
waters. 

It  might,  however,  perhaps  be  wished,  for  the  sake  of 
the  memories  of  these  poor  royal  ladies,  that  the  subse- 
quent benefits  of  the  Clitorian  waters  were  not  confined 
solely  to  dipsomaniacs. 

Pausanias  mentions  a  belief  held  by  some  that  Melam- 
pus cast  into  the  river  Anigrus  the  purifying  materials 
through  which  he  freed  from  madness  the  daughters  of 
Proetus,  which  materials  were  supposed  to  be  the  cause 
of  the  bad  odors  of  the  Anigrus*  waters.  But  one's  faith 
in  Ovid's  version  may  be  kept  intact  in  view  of  the  opin- 
ion, held  by  others,  that  the  Anigrus  owed  its  evil  odor 
to  the  Hydra  poison  which  the  Centaur  Chiron  washed 
out  of  a  foot  wound  accidentally  inflicted  by  one  of  the 
arrows  of  Hercules. 

The  ruins  of  Clitor  are  now  called  Paleop61i,  meaning 
the  old  city,  and  are  distant  about  three  miles  from  a 
village  which  still  bears  the  nam^e  of  the  ancient  town. 
They  lie  in  the  modern  eparchy  of  Kalavryta,  south  of 
the    highest    peak   of    the    Aroanian,    now    called   the 


ARCADIA  ^ 

Azanian  mountains,  on  the  summits  of  which  the 
daughters  of  Proetus  wandered  in  their  miserable 
condition. 

The  fountain  was  probably  the  source  of  the  stream  of 
the  same  name  that  within  a  mile  of  the  town  ran  into 
the  river  Aroanius,  or  as  it  was  called  later  in  its  course, 
Olbius,  the  remarkable  vocal  properties  of  whose  vari- 
egated fish  were  the  cause  of  little  less  wonder  than  the 
marvelous  fountain  itself,  for  they  were  said  to  sing  like 
thrushes  after  sundown.  Pausanias,  without  considering 
that  few  birds  sing  any  more  after  sunset  than  the 
silentest  sort  of  fish,  sat  patiently  on  the  river  bank  to 
hear  these  ichthyoid  thrushes,  without,  however,  being 
able  to  leave  to  posterity  any  corroboration  of  the  stories 
of  the  nature  fakirs  of  the  Arcadians. 

The  founder  of  the  town  lost  his  life  through  the  bite 
of  a  worm  as  peculiar  as  either  the  fish  or  the  fountain; 
it  is  described  as  small,  ash  colored,  and  marked  with 
irregular  stripes;  it  had  a  broad  head  supported  by  a 
narrow  neck,  a  large  belly  and  a  small  tail ;  and  it  walked 
sideways  like  a  crab. 

Ovid.     Metamorphoses;  XV.  In.  322.     Vitruvius;   VIII.  3. 


23 

Crathis 

The  Crathis,  the  river  that  received  the  homeopathic 
triturations  that  filtered  through  the  rock  of  Nonacris, 
had  its  Springs  in  the  Crathis  mountain,  and  flowed  into 
the  sea  near  .^gae  a  deserted  town  of  Achaia. 

Someone  from  the  banks  of  the  Crathis  apparently 
went  to  Italy  and  fondly  transferred  his  native  river's 
name  to  the  stream  in  Bruttii. 


32  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

The  mingling  of  the  waters  is  said  to  have  suggested 
the  name,  which  means  mixture. 

Strabo;   VIII.  7. 


24 

Well  Alyssus 

Two  stadia  from  Cynaetha  there  was  a  Well  of  cold 
water  and  a  plane  tree  growing  by  it. 

Whoever  was  bitten  by  a  mad  dog,  or  had  received  any 
other  hurt,  if  he  drank  of  that  water  got  cured,  and,  for 
that  reason,  they  called  it  the  Well  Alyssus. 

It  was  pointed  out  for  the  benefit  of  the  pessimistic 
that  the  gods  always  furnished  a  compensation  for  mis- 
fortunes, and  that  there  were  Springs  like  the  Alyssus 
provided  to  cure  many  ills,  as  well  as  harmful  water  like 
that  of  the  Styx. 

Fortunately,  to  the  benefit  of  those  not  living  near  this 
Spring,  it  was  discovered  that  its  properties  were  also 
possessed  by  the  plant  Alysson  whose  name,  expressing 
in  one  word  Depriving  of  Madness,  came  from  a  reputa- 
tion that  is  now  enjoyed  by  the  Pasteur  treatment  for 
hydrophobia.  Such  as  were  bitten  by  mad  dogs  were 
assured  that  they  would  not  become  rabid  if  they  took 
this  plant  in  vinegar,  and  wore  it  as  an  amulet.  The 
modern  name  for  the  plant  conveys  little  suggestion  of 
the  virtues  it  was  formerly  supposed  to  possess — it  is  now 
called  the  wild  madder. 

Many  Springs  that  had  no  medicinal  or  curative  powers 
themselves,  under  ordinary  conditions,  seem  to  have 
fostered  the  growth  of  plants  that  possessed  such  powers. 

There  was  the  Lingua  (Wildenow)  whose  roots  re- 
duced to  ashes  and  beaten  up  with  lard,  made  from  a 
black  and  barren  sow,  cured  Alopecy  when  the  mixture 


ARCADIA  m 

was  rubbed  on  the  patient's  head  while  the  sun  shone 
on  it. 

The  Onobrychus  (Sainfoin)  cured  strangury  when  it 
was  reduced  to  powder  and  sprinkled  with  white  wine. 

Centaury  (Felwort)  was  a  purge  for  all  noxious  sub- 
stances ;  it  was  used  in  the  form  of  an  extract  made  from 
leaves  gathered  in  the  autumn  and  steeped  for  eighteen 
days  in  water. 

Adiantum  (Maiden-hair  fern)  was  so  called  because  it 
had  an  aversion  to  water  and  dried  up  when  sprinkled 
with  it.  Nevertheless  it  was  always  found  in  the  grottos 
of  Springs.  It  received  its  Latin  name  of  Saxifragum 
(Stone-breaking)  because  of  its  efficacy  in  breaking  and 
expelling  calculi  of  the  bladder.  It  was  also  an  antidote 
for  the  venom  of  serpents  and  spiders.  It  relieved  head- 
ache; cured  Alopecy;  dispersed  sores  and  ulcers;  and  a 
decoction  of  it  was  good  for  asthma,  and  for  troubles  of 
the  liver,  spleen  and  gall,  and  for  dropsy,  and  half  a  dozen 
other  affections. 

Bechion  or  Tussilago  is  not  mentioned  medicinally, 
though  its  growth  anywhere  was  an  infallible  sign  that  a 
Spring  of  water  lay  below. 

But  independently  of  surrounding  plants,  or  of  mineral 
contents,  all  Springs  and  Wells  had  healing  properties 
when  their  waters  were  used  under  certain  conditions; 
thus,  according  to  Artemon,  epilepsy  could  be  cured  with 
the  water  of  any  Spring,  if  it  was  drawn  at  night  and 
drunk  from  the  skull  of  a  man  who  had  been  slain  and 
whose  body  remained  unburned. 

For  Tertian  Fever,  it  was  recommended  to  take  equal 
parts  of  water  from  three  Wells,  using  a  new  earthen 
vessel  and  administering  the  combination  to  the  patient 
when  the  paroxysm  came  on;  part  of  the  water  being 
first  poured  out  as  a  pious  libation. 


.34  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

Another  good  office  performed  by  Wells  was  their  silent 
prediction  of  the  occurrence  of  earthquakes  in  advance 
of  which  the  water  became  turbid  and  emitted  an  un- 
pleasant odor.  This  faculty  became  known  at  a  very 
early  date,  for  Pherecydes,  the  first  man  who  wrote  any- 
thing in  prose,  foretold  an  earthquake  as  soon  as  he  ob- 
served these  conditions  in  some  water  he  had  drawn  out 
of  a  Well;  and  he  is  said  to  have  obtained  his  knowledge 
from  the  secret  books  of  the  Phoenicians. 

On  the  other  hand.  Wells  whose  waters  were  perfectly 
good  sometimes  became  suddenly  poisonous  because 
salamanders  had  accidentally  fallen  into  them;  in  conse- 
quence of  which  whole  families  were  sometimes  made 
dangerously  ill,  for  Wells  were  often  used  as  ice-boxes 
by  sinking  into  them  vessels  containing  fruits  and  other 
foods. 

The  site  of  Cynaetha,  which  was  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
from  the  Spring,  is  now  marked  by  the  village  of 
Kalavryta. 

Pliny;  XXIV.  S7. 
Pausanias;  VIII.  19. 


25 

Lusi 

At  Lusi  there  was  a  fountain  in  which  land  mice  lived 
and  dwelt. 

This  marvelous  story  appears  to  have  originated  in  a 
statement  made  by  Aristotle. 

Lusi  was  northwest  of  Clitor,  and  eight  miles  from 
Cyncetha;  near  its  supposed  site  there  are  now  three 
fountains,  but  none  of  them  contains  any  specimens  of 
the  family  of  amphibious  mice. 

Pliny;   XXXL   10. 


ARCADIA  ;;  ^g 

26 

Menelaus' 

A  little  above  the  town  of  Caphyae  there  was  a  well  and 
by  it  a  large  and  beautiful  plane  tree  called  Menelaus'. 

Although  the  Arcadian  contingent  that  went  to  the 
siege  of  Troy  had  to  go  in  other  people's  boats,  some  of 
the  preliminaries  of  the  campaign  were  arranged  in  that 
navyless  country. 

Menelaus  went  there  to  muster  a  part  of  the  army  and 
stayed  there  long  enough  to  plant  the  hardy  tree.  He 
seems  to  have  had  a  fondness  for  planes,  and  if  there  was 
not  one  already  growing  where  he  stopped  he  supplied 
the  deficiency  without  delay. 

The  tree  at  Caphyae  had  no  such  momentous  connec- 
tion with  the  fate  of  Troy  as  the  one  at  Aulis  (see  Aulis) 
had  in  the  dragon  incident  while  the  fleet  was  awaiting  a 
favorable  wind,  but  it  was  understood  to  be  the  fifth  oldest 
tree  in  the  world  a  thousand  and  five  hundred  years  after 
it  was  planted;  the  others,  in  their  order, being  the  Willow 
in  the  temple  of  Hera  at  Samos ;  the  Oak  at  Dodona ;  the 
Olive  in  the  Acropolis  and  the  Laurel  of  the  Syrians,  who 
claimed  for  it  the  third  place. 

Caphyae  is  now  represented  by  the  small  village  called 
Khotussa. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  23. 


27 

Philip's  Well 

A  few  miles  beyond  Arne  stretched  the  plain  of  Argum 
where  were  the  ruins  of  Nestane,  a  mountain  village  by 
which  Philip  had  encamped. 

The  outlines  of  the  ruins  could  be  traced  more  than 


36  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

four  hundred  years  afterwards  about  the  Spring  that  the 
commander  used,  and  that  was  thereafter  always  asso- 
ciated with  his  name. 

The  Commander  was  that  PhiHp  II,  the  son  of  Amyn- 
tas  and  the  most  valorous  of  all  the  Macedonian  Kings, 
who,  himself  "Always  Great,  "  was  the  father  of  Alexan- 
der the  Great. 

2250  years  before  the  term  was  invented,  he  was  a 
scrap  of  paper  diplomatist,  and  preferred  bribery  to 
battles.  The  effect  that  his  example  had  on  the  moral 
fiber  of  the  country  can  be  seen,  although  one  can  only 
speculate  how  much  longer  the  Grecian  structure  would 
have  lasted  if  he  had  not  loosened  so  many  stones  of  its 
foundations  in  the  46  years  before  he  was  assassinated. 
A  village  called  Tzipiana  now  occupies  the  site  of 
Nestane. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  7- 

28 

Well  of  the  Meliast^e 

The  Spring  called  the  Well  of  the  Meliastas  was  seven 
stadia  from  Melangea. 

The  Meliastae  had  a  Hall  of  Dionysus,  near  the  Well 
and  in  his  celebrations  they  held  orgies. 

They  had  also  a  temple  to  Black  Aphrodite.  There 
have  been  concessions  made  by  statuaries  that  were 
seemingly  not  consistent  with  the  principles  of  accurate 
Art  such  as  representing  Venus  for  Africans  with  the 
complexion  of  its  connoisseurs  of  female  beauty,  and 
carving  statues  of  the  River  Nile  out  of  black  stone 
instead  of  white:  the  Black  Venus  of  the  MeHastas  was, 
however,  in  no  such  category,  but  was  a  sincere  attempt 
to  express  a  custom  by  color,  and  to  convey  the  idea  that 


ARCADIA  ^. 

while  men  devote  the  day  to  making  lucre  they  have  only 
black  night  to  give  to  making  love. 

This  Well  was  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  present 
village  of  Pikerni  which  abounds  in  Springs  whose  waters 
were  anciently  conveyed  by  an  aqueduct  to  Mantineia; 
some  remains  of  the  aqueduct  have  been  discovered,  and 
others  may  yet  be  brought  to  light  that  will  designate 
which  particular  Spring  was  the  one  appropriated  by  the 
Nymphs. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  6. 


29 

Olympias 

The  Spring  called  Olympias  was  between  the  river 
Alpheus  and  the  ruins  of  the  town  of  Trapezus,  and  not 
far  from  the  river  Bathos. 

This  Spring  flowed  only  every  other  year  and  fire  came 
out  of  the  ground  near  it,  and  the  people  there  sacrificed 
to  Thunder  and  Lightning  and  to  Storms. 

The  Arcadians  were  fond  of  correcting  a  common  error, 
the  belief  that  Thrace  was  the  battle  ground  of  the  war 
between  the  gods  and  the  giants,  and  they  pointed  to  this 
Spring  as  marking  the  site  of  the  contest,  with  which  they 
were  suflEiciently  familiar  to  add  that  the  giants  engaged 
in  the  battle  had  dragons  instead  of  feet. 

Trapezus  received  its  name,  meaning  table,  from  an 
early  and  unheeded  expression  of  Zeus'  disapproval  of 
human  sacrifices,  for  it  was  at  that  place  that  the  offended 
god  overturned  a  table  on  which  Lycaon  had  laid  meat 
of  human  beings  for  his  entertainment. 

The  people  of  the  town  claimed  to  have  founded  the 
city  of  the  same  name  on  the  Euxine  Sea,  which,  as  Tre- 
bizond,  was  the  residence  of  Anthony  Hope's  Princess. 


38  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

The  modern  village  Mavria  lies  below  the  site  of  the 
Arcadian  Trapezus. 

Pausanias;   VIII.  29. 


30 

Alpheus 

The  first  source  of  the  Alpheus  river  was  at  Phylace; 
it  was  the  chief  river  of  the  Morea,  both  in  fact  and  in 
fable,  and  in  its  short  course  of  less  than  one  hundred 
miles  it  frequently  changed  its  character,  being  a  Spring 
at  one  place,  a  river  at  another,  and  often  an  unseen 
underground  watercourse. 

It  was  a  virile  and  impulsive  stream  and  when  it  finally 
reached  the  Ionic  Sea  at  Cellene,  even  the  Adriatic  though 
a  big  and  stormy  sea  could  not  bar  its  passage  or  change 
its  nature,  and  it  continued  to  flow  through  the  salt 
water  until  it  reached  the  shore  of  Ortygia,  in  Sicily, 
where  it  bubbled  up  in  the  form  it  assumed  at  its  birth — 
ending  its  course  as  it  began  it,  in  the  shape  of  a  Spring. 

Not  far  from  its  source,  at  a  place  called  the  Meeting 
of  the  Waters,  it  was  joined  by  another  river  in  company 
with  which  it  traveled  until  it  dropped  with  a  loud  roar- 
ing sound  into  the  earth  in  the  Plain  of  Tegea. 

It  reappeared  five  stadia  from  Asea  near  the  source  of 
the  Eurotas  with  which  it  united;  after  flowing  together 
some  twenty  stadia,  they  retired  through  a  cavity  to  an 
underground  bed  and,  while  out  of  sight,  separated,  the 
Eurotas  coming  up  in  Laconia  and  the  Alpheus  making 
its  reappearance  at  Pegae  in  Megalopolis. 

The  Asean  Spring  of  the  Alpheus  is  now  called  Frango- 
vrysi,  Frank  Spring,  and  gushes  out  copiously  on  the 
present  Mt.  Kravari  near  what  the  Fountain  has  located 
as  the  ruins  of  Asea. 


ARCADIA  35t 

Where  the  streams  flowed  together  they  acted  as  very 
intelligent  common  carriers  though,  unfortunately  for 
general  merchandise  shippers  in  the  zone,  only  for  the 
delivery  of  crowns ;  but  these,  when  a  certain  charm  had 
been  uttered  over  them,  had  merely  to  be  cast  into  the 
common  channel  in  order  to  infallibly  insure  their  ap- 
pearance as  desired,  either  in  the  Eurotas  or  the  Alpheus 
when  they  reemerged  separately. 

The  efficacy  of  the  charm  in  causing  crowns  to  float 
might  seem  to  be  quite  as  notable  as  its  power  to  direct 
their  course ;  but  the  crowns  were  not  of  metal ;  they  were 
garlands  which  at  first  were  made  of  ivy  or  myrtle,  and 
called  crowns  because  revelers  bound  them  about  their 
heads  to  ward  off  aches  that  might  follow  wine  drinking. 

They  were  invented  as  ligatures  by  the  man  who  first 
reflected  upon  the  relief  he  felt  when  pressing  his  hands 
about  his  head  after  a  carouse.  The  crude  crown  was 
improved  by  interweaving  herbs  with  a  scent  that  offset 
the  fumes  of  wine,  and  then  beautified  by  the  addition  of 
colored  flowers  that  made  it  an  ornamental  garland. 

After  one  period  of  seclusion  the  Alpheus  rose  as  a 
Spring  called  The  Wells  in  a  deep  ravine  near  Tricolini ; 
and  after  another  disappearance  it  came  to  light  again  at 
Carnasium  in  Messenia  and  absorbed  two  new  rivers. 

By  the  time  it  had  reached  the  Adriatic  it  had  become 
a  plethoric  stream,  a  notable  River  Trust,  that  had  ab- 
sorbed a  score  or  more  of  competing  tributaries  and  con- 
trolled the  product  of  74%  of  the  Springs  of  Arcadia 
which  it  distributed  to  the  ultimate  consumer,  the  Sea. 

It  passed  a  third  of  its  existence  in  the  district  of  Elis, 
and  at  Olympia  two  altars  were  erected  to  it.  In  that 
neighborhood  it  was  held  in  special  veneration;  women 
of  Elis  were  forbidden  to  cross  it  on  certain  days  under 
penalty  of  being  hurled  from  Mt.  Typseum,  and  at  one 


40  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

time  even  flies  were  allowed  access  to  only  one  side  of  it, 
being  driven  from  the  Temple  side  by  a  special  sacrifice 
that  Hercules  instituted,  although  it  is  not  explained 
why  the  fresh  carcass  of  the  ox  in  this  sacrifice  was  sus- 
pended on  the  other  side  of  the  stream. 

Its  banks  were  noted  for  the  production  of  the  wild 
olive  tree,  and  towards  the  end  of  its  course  in  Elis  it 
flowed  through  flowery  groves  filled  with  many  images  of 
the  gods,  and  many  lovely  little  temples  to  the  goddesses. 

Its  early  name  was  bestowed  on  it  from  its  beneficent 
property  of  curing  a  form  of  leprosy  called  alphi. 

At  its  source,  the  Alpheus  is  now  called  Saranda;  then, 
the  Karitena,  and,  after  its  junction  with  the  ancient 
Ladon,  the  Rufea;  and  its  old  time  vagaries  may  still  be 
observed  where,  the  ancient  names  having  been  changed, 
Phylace  has  become  Krya  Vrysi ;  Asea,  Frangovrysi ;  and 
Pegse,  Marmara. 

The  love  that  led  this  fresh  water  stream  to  undertake 
its  long  journey  through  the  salty  sea  is  referred  to  in  the 
account  of  the  Spring  of  Arethusa.     (No.  486.) 

Pausanias;  VIII.  54. 


31 

Ladon 

The  Springs  of  the  river  Ladon  were  sixty  stadia  from 
the  town  of  Clitor,  and  fifty  from  Lucaria;  it  was  said 
that  they  were  reappearances  of  the  water  of  the  marsh 
at  Pheneus  which  escaped  below  ground  there  through 
pits  under  the  mountain. 

The  Ladon  excelled  all  rivers  of  Greece  for  the  beauty 
of  its  stream,  and  it  was  famous  for  its  legend  of  Daphne 
with  whom  Leucippus  fell  in  love,  and  to  whom  he  made 
his  advances  in  the  guise  of  a  girl.    Letting  his  hair  grow 


ARCADIA  41 

long,  and  adorning  himself  in  the  garb  of  a  maiden,  he 
succeeded  in  winning  so  much  of  Daphne's  friendship 
that  Apollo  became  jealous  and  brought  about  his  ruin 
by  a  mental  suggestion  to  Daphne  while  she  and  her 
girl  companions,  together  with  Leucippus,  were  one  day 
swimming  in  the  Ladon.  It  thus  suddenly  came  into 
Daphne's  head  to  start  so  strenuous  a  romp  in  the  water 
that  when  the  joyous  party  came  out  of  the  river  their 
clothing  was  little  more  than  tatters. 

Thereupon  their  joy  gave  place  to  furious  anger  and 
they  attacked  Leucippus  so  viciously  with  their  imple- 
ments of  the  chase  that  he  was  overwhelmed  and  killed. 

The  Ladon  is  now  known  as  the  Rufea,  and  the  same 
name  is  applied  to  the  Alpheus  after  it  receives  the  old 
Ladon;  before  the  junction,  the  Alpheus  is  called  the 
Karitena. 

The  Island  of  Crows  was  formed  where  the  Ladon 
flowed  into  the  Alpheus. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  20. 


32 

Erymanthus 

The  Erymanthus  River  had  its  sources  in  the  mountain 
Lampea,  which  was  sacred  to  Pan,  and  was  a  part  of  Mt. 
Erymanthus  so  named  after  a  hunter  who,  according  to 
Homer,  was  a  lover  of  Lampea. 

Among  other  wild  beasts  of  this  river's  neighborhood 
there  was  a  boar  which  so  much  exceeded  all  others  in 
size  and  strength  that  the  killing  of  it  was  made  one  of 
the  labors  of  Hercules,  and  was  the  fourth  that  he 
accomplished. 

Another  big  pig,  however,  has  become  more  prominent 
because  the  chase  of  it  was  made  the  occasion  of  a  large 


42  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

gathering  like  the  family  parties  that  used  to  make  up  an 
old  fashioned  Southern  fox-hunt ;  the  elite  of  Mythology, 
both  men  and  women,  met  together  on  that  occasion  by 
the  river  Evenus  in  ^tolia.  The  party  included  Theseus 
who  destroyed  the  Crommyon  sow,  the  dam  of  the  Caly- 
donian  boar  that  the  party  assembled  to  hunt,  and  finally 
killed. 

Nearly  all  of  the  parts  of  the  Calydonian  boar  except 
the  bacon  were  preserved  for  ages  in  places  wide  apart; 
but  of  the  Erymanthian  brute  only  a  few  teeth  seem  to 
have  been  kept  as  souvenirs.  These  were  stored  up  by 
the  people  of  Cumae  in  the  temple  of  Apollo;  but  a  well 
informed  ancient  antiquarian  said  of  them  that  there  was 
very  little  probability  that  they  were  genuine. 

The  curious  association  of  this  name  of  Erymanthus 
with  boars  is  seen  in  the  story  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  in 
which  Apollo,  metamorphosed  into  a  wild  boar,  killed 
Adonis  because  Venus  had  blinded  Apollo's  son  Eryman- 
thus for  having  seen  her  in  the  bath. 

The  Erymanthus  was  absorbed  by  the  Alpheus  two 
and  a  half  miles  below  where  the  latter  received  the 
Ladon. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  24. 


33 
Brentheates  River 

On  the  right  of  a  large  plain  between  Gortys  and 
Megalopolis  were  the  ruins  of  the  town  of  Brenthe  from 
which  the  river  Brentheates  flowed  to  join  the  Alpheus 
five  stadia  farther  on. 

This  little  stream,  less  than  a  mile  long,  is  now  the 
modern  brook  called  Karitena. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  28. 


ARCADIA  43 

34 
BuPHAGUs  River 

The  river  Buphagus  rose  at  Buphagium  beyond 
Aliphera. 

This  river  flowed  into  the  Alpheus  after  forming  the 
boundary  between  the  districts  of  Megalopolis  and 
Heraea. 

Buphagus  offended  Artemis  and  she,  in  her  quick- 
tempered way,  shot  and  killed  him  with  an  arrow. 
As  her  anger  was  caused  by  persistent  attentions 
that  she  was  not  disposed  to  favor,  the  victim  was 
probably  not  that  nephew  of  Rhea's  who  bore  the  same 
name. 

The  identity  of  the  Buphagus  has  not  been  agreeably 
established. 

Pausanias;  VIII-  36. 


35-40 
Helisson  River 

The  river  Helisson  rose  in  a  village  of  the  same  name 
and  flowed  through  the  city  of  Megalopolis  which  it 
divided  into  two  parts. 

The  Helisson  was  indebted  to  no  less  than  five  Springs 
in  the  town  of  Megalopolis  for  additions  to  the  volume 
of  its  current : 

(36)  one  that  had  its  rise  in  the  hill  Scolitas  within  the 
city  walls; 

(37)  the  Spring  Bathyllus  which  came  out  of  another 
small  hill  in  the  city ; 

(38)  a  perennial  Spring  that  rose  in  the  theater  which 
was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  theaters  in 
Greece; 


44  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

(39)  a  Spring  that  was  held  sacred  to  Dionysus  and 
which  appeared  not  very  far  from  the  theater; 

(40)  a  fifth  Spring  that  rose  from  a  third  hill  with- 
in the  city  limits,  near  a  temple  of  ^Esculapius 
in  which  were  stored  the  bones  of  a  giant. 

The  first  two  Springs  were  on  the  north  side  of 
the  river,  and  the  last  three  were  on  the  south  side 
of  it. 

Thirty  stadia  from  Megalopolis  the  Helisson  gave  itself 
up  to  the  Alpheus  river. 

Megalopolis  was  founded  by  Epaminondas  370  years 
B.C.  Planned,  as  its  name  indicates,  on  a  huge  scale 
that  was  to  extend  for  twenty-three  miles,  forty  town- 
ships were  drawn  upon  to  start  its  population;  and  it 
became  the  capital  of  Arcadia. 

The  road  that  led  from  Megalopolis  to  Messene  fol- 
lowed the  path  taken  by  Orestes  after  murdering  his 
mother,  and  temples  and  mounds  marked  the  sites  of 
various  incidents  that  occurred  during  his  passage ;  they 
indicated,  where  he  became  insane;  where  he  cut  off  his 
hair;  where  he  bit  off  his  finger;  and  finally,  where  he 
gained  his  senses. 

The  modern  village  of  Sinanu  has  grown  up  among 
the  old  city's  ruins;  these  were  examined  in  1834,  when 
all  of  the  five  Springs  gave  efficient  aid  in  identifying  the 
places  of  the  ancient  structures  with  which  they  were 
connected.  A  deep  pile  of  dampened  rubbish  was  found 
to  conceal  a  Spring  which  led  to  the  discovery  of  the 
foundations  of  the  theater  where  it  occupied  a  prominent 
position  in  the  orchestra. 

And  the  other  Springs  were  equally  useful  in  pointing 
out  to  the  excavators  where  the  temples  stood,  and  in 
giving  the  names  of  the  hills. 

Pausanias;  VIll.  30-32.  ■      ; 


ARCADIA  45 

LUSIUS-GORTYNIUS 

On  the  borders  of  Methydrium  at  Thisoa  were  the 
sources  of  one  of  the  coldest  of  all  rivers.  It  was  known 
as  the  Gortynius,  except  at  the  Springs,  where  it  was 
called  Lusius  because  Zeus  had  been  bathed  in  it  after 
his  birth  near  the  Spring  of  Neda.  ^  .-> 

The  name  suggests  that  this  was  an  extra  bath  given 
by  Thisoa,  one  of  the  infant's  three  nurses. 

This  two-name  river  was  another  tributary  of  the 
Alpheus,  and  the  place  where  they  united  was  called 
Rhaeteae. 

A  nervous  and  excitable  leader  in  the  expedition 
against  Troy  came  from  the  district  of  Thisoa.  His 
name  was  Theutis,  and  he  should  be  accorded  the  dis- 
tinction of  having  fired  the  first  shot  in  the  Trojan  War, 
a  shot  that  wounded  a  no  less  redoubtable  antagonist 
than  the  goddess  Athena,  and  that  unfortunately  ended 
his  career.  ''^ 

Irritated  by  a  long  delay  at  Aulis  where  the  fleet  was 
windbound,  Theutis  suddenly  decided  to  march  his 
troops  back  home,  and  when  Athena  attempted  to  change 
his  decision  he,  in  a  boiling  rage,  ran  his  spear  through 
the  goddess'  thigh.  On  reaching  Thisoa  he  was  seized 
with  a  wasting  disease  which  extended  even  to  the 
fruits  none  of  which  would  ripen  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  Spring  until,  by  advice  of  the  oracle  of  Dodona, 
a  statue  of  the  speared  divinity  was  made  which 
showed  the  wound  bound  realistically  with  a  purple 
bandage. 

Methydrium  was  170  stadia  from  Megalopolis,  and  to 
the  north  of  it,  and  the  river  is  said  to  be  the  one  that  now 
flows  by  the  village  of  Atzi  Kolo. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  28. 


46  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

42 

Nymphasia 

A  Spring  called  the  Well  Nymphasia  was  found  thirty 
stadia  from  Methydrium;  the  latter  town  was  137  stadia 
from  Tricolini. 

Tricolini  is  supposed  to  have  stood  within  a  mile  of  the 
town  of  Karatula. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  36. 


43 
Tragus  River 

In  the  plain  of  Caphyas  there  was  a  reservoir  of  water 
that  was  absorbed  into  the  ground.  Afterwards  that 
water  came  up  at  what  was  called  Nasi,  near  the  village 
of  Rheunos,  and  formed  there  the  perennial  river  Tragus. 

The  stream  now  named  Tara  is  believed  to  be  the 
ancient  Tragus. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  23. 


ARGOLIS 

44 
Adrastea 

After  passing  the  small  town  of  Cleone  on  the  way  to 
Argos,  the  road  became  narrow  and  ran  between  for- 
bidding mountains  at  one  time  the  haunts  of  fearsome 
beasts,  man-eating  dragons,  frightful  felidag  of  which  the 
most  noted  and  dreaded  representative  was  the  Nemean 
Lion,  whose  lair  among  those  mountains  was  still  pointed 
out  in  the  second  century  of  the  Christian  Era  to  touring 
travelers  who  gazed  at  it  with  awesome  dread,  hundreds 
of  years  after  Hercules  had  dispatched  its  murderous 
occupant. 

At  Nemea,  only  fifteen  stadia  distant  from  the  lair,  was 
the  cypress  grove  where  Lycurgus'  little  son  Opheltes, 
left  alone  on  the  herbage  by  a  thoughtless  nurse,  was 
devoured  by  a  dragon. 

Amphiaraus  the  Soothsayer  saw  in  this  little  tragedy 
an  omen  of  a  larger  one  near  at  hand,  but  his  warning 
that  might  have  averted  it  was  disregarded.  This  all 
happened  on  a  pleasant  day  in  the  year  1225  B.C.  when 
The  Seven  Against  Thebes,  on  their  way  to  the  assault 
of  that  city  stopped  to  ask  the  nurse  where  they  could 
find  water. 

She,  only  too  glad  to  prolong  a  parley  with  the  martial 
party  gaudy  in  their  bright  array  of  shining  armor,  having 
laid  the  child  down,  piloted  them  around  a  screening 
clump  of  bushes,  and  pointed  out  the  fountain  of  Adras- 

47 


48  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

tea.  Standing  entranced  with  the  sight  of  the  brass- 
armored  band  of  soldiers  drinking  from  their  helmets  at 
the  Spring,  she  was  startled  by  the  infant's  cries  and, 
rushing  back  to  where  she  had  left  him,  her  own  piercing 
shrieks  filled  the  air  as  the  sounds  from  the  infant  sud- 
denly stopped. 

The  soldiers,  running  around  the  obscuring  screen  of 
bushes  to  learn  the  cause  of  the  cries,  were  only  in  time 
to  see  the  murderous  monster  disappearing  in  the  dis- 
tance, and  a  few  splashes  of  bright  red  moisture  shining 
in  the  sunlight  on  the  herbage  where  the  infant  had  been 
chewed  up  by  the  dragon. 

It  was  then  that  the  Seer,  himself  a  soldier,  and  one  of 
the  party,  read  the  warning  that  Fate  had  set  in  the  scene 
that  she  had  staged  before  them,  and  explained  that 
Thebes  was  the  dragon,  and  the  infant's  end  their 
own. 

But  his  warning  was  in  vain,  and  the  martial  blood  of 
six  of  the  heroes  in  a  few  days  glistened  in  lakes  on  the 
green  grass  around  the  gates  of  Thebes. 

Through  King  Creon's  cruelty,  the  corpses  of  the 
heroes  were  left  for  a  long  time  unburied,  but  the  few 
pieces  of  the  bones  of  Opheltes  that  were  rescued  were 
carefully  placed  in  a  tomb  raised  on  the  blood-sprinkled 
spot  by  the  Spring  near  the  base  of  the  mountain  Apesas. 
Both  the  dragon,  which  the  heroes  killed,  and  the  Ne- 
mean  lion  must  often  have  quenched  their  thirst  at  this 
fountain  and  washed  down  with  its  waters  many  a  cruel 
feast  that  made  the  human  population  smaller,  for 
neither  the  Inachus  nor  any  of  the  other  neighboring 
rivers  had  water  in  their  channels  in  rainless  seasons. 

The  vicinage  was  not  only  made  picturesque  by  the 
numerous  mountains  that  formed  the  valley  in  which  the 
Spring  took  its  rise,  but  was  endeared  to  the  hearts  of  the 


ARGOLIS  45t 

Grecians  through  classic  memories  long  and  carefully- 
cherished. 

Not  far  away,  and  in  the  direction  of  Argos,  were  the 
ruins  of  Mycenas,  the  first  and  the  oldest  town  of  Argolis, 
which  was  there  founded  by  Perseus,  because  his  scab- 
bard dropped  from  his  sword  on  its  site.  And  it  was 
quite  in  keeping  with  this  circumstance  that  the  spot  in 
the  woods  so  pointed  out  by  the  naked  sword,  should 
afterwards,  as  a  city,  furnish  leaders  for  the  Trojan  war, 
and  more  than  a  quarter  of  the  martial  heroes  whose 
swords  wrote  in  blood  the  stirring  and  enduring  story  of 
Thermopylae. 

Mycenae  was  in  Agamemnon's  time  the  capital  of  his 
kingdom,  and  the  chief  city  in  Greece,  and  a  list  of  its 
principal  citizens  in  those  days,  nearly  a  thousand  years 
before  its  fall  in  468  B.C.,  reproduces  the  casts  in  the  most 
dreadful  tragedies  of  .^schylus  and  Sophocles,  with  such 
names  as  Atreus,  ^Egisthus,  Clytemnestra,  Orestes,  and 
many  others,  against  each  of  which  is  written  some 
marrow-freezing  crime,  from  infant  killing  and  cooking  to 
murders  of  relations  of  all  degrees  of  kinship. 

It  might  seem  as  though,  long  ago,  germs  of  courage 
and  ferocity  were  bred  in  this  Spring,  and  in  the  one 
called  the  fountain  of  Perseus  which  rose  in  the  ruins  of 
Mycenae,  as,  nowadays,  other  germs  are  cultivated  in  the 
broth  of  the  bacteriologist,  germs  that  made  the  men  of 
Mycenas  no  less  hardy  and  fierce  than  the  four-footed 
terror  that  in  earlier  times  ravaged  Nemea  until  Hercu- 
les, as  the  first  of  his  labors,  dispatched  it  and  freed  the 
country  from  its  depredations. 

vSo  strong  were  this  lion's  muscles,  and  so  hard  was  its 
hide,  which  no  arrow  could  pierce,  that  the  hero  was  at 
last  forced  to  throw  away  his  weapon  and  squeeze  it  to 
death  in  his  arms.    Afterwards  this  hide  became  the  con- 


50  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

queror's  sole  and  imperishable  armor  and  garment  with 
which  he  is  pictured  by  the  poets  and  painters  of  pos- 
terity, except  during  the  period  when,  under  the  domina- 
tion of  Omphale,  he  laid  aside  his  club  and  lion's  skin  and 
adopted  the  distaff  and  dress  of  a  woman. 

Here  also,  by  this  Spring,  gathered  the  finest  athletes; 
and  artists  of  Argolis  and  elsewhere  in  the  first  and  third, 
year  of  each  Olympiad  to  celebrate  one  of  the  four  great 
festivals  of  Greece,  the  Nemean  games — sports  and  con- 
tests that  aroused  such  widespread  interest  that  no  less, 
than  eleven  of  the  Odes  of  Pindar  were  composed  in 
honor  of  its  victors,  some  of  whom  contended  for  promi- 
nence in  musical  and  in  metrical  composition. 

The  first  of  those  Nemean  games  were  held  in  connec- 
tion with  the  funeral  ceremonies  of  Opheltes;  they  con- 
tinued to  be  held  every  two  years  thereafter,  and  the 
prizes  were  always  crowns  of  parsley,  because  it  was  in  a. 
patch  of  parsley  that  Opheltes  was  devoured. 

Owing  to  Amphiaraus'  forecast,  the  poor  child  was 
afterwards  spoken  of  as  Archemorus,  that  is.  The  Fore- 
runner of  Death. 

The  nurse  whose  carelessness  was  the  cause  of  so  many 
untoward  events  had  a  sad  story  of  her  own.  Before  she 
became  one  of  the  slaves  of  Lycurgus,  she  was  a  Princess, 
and  the  daughter  of  Thoas,  king  of  Lemnos.  When  the 
women  of  that  island  decided  to  kill  all  the  men,  and  had 
actually  dispatched  them,  they  discovered  that  Hyp- 
sipyle  had  concealed  her  father  Thoas  and  had  saved  him;: 
and  in  punishment  of  her  defection  they  sold  her  into 
slavery,  and  Lycurgus  became  her  owner. 

It  was,  of  old,  uncertain  whether  the  Spring  received 
its  name  because  Adrastus  was  the  first  to  discover  it,  or 
for  some  other  reason;  but  as  Nemesis,  the  power  that, 
stood  for  justice,  and  punished  unfairness,  was  also  called 


ARGOLIS  S? 

Adrastea,  a  more  appropriate  name  could  hardly  have 
been  found  for  the  Spring  by  which  so  many  rival  athletes 
spent  their  time  while  training,  and  during  competition; 
so  called,  at  every  draught  the  name  of  the  goddess  would 
be  on  their  lips,  and  in  their  minds,  to  warn  them  from 
subterfuge  and  urge  them  to  fair  and  honest  effort  in 
striving  for  the  prize  for  which  they  entered. 

At  the  foot  of  Mt.  Apesas,  now  named  Fuca,  are  the 
remains  of  the  stadium  of  the  ancient  games,  and  to  the 
right  of  them  is  found  the  Spring  of  Adrastea  whose  water 
supplied  an  artificial  fountain  structure  the  connection 
with  which  is  now  out  of  order. 

Pausanias;  II.  15-16. 


45 
The  Spring  of  Perseus 

Mycenae,  the  oldest  town  in  Argolis,  was  in  ruins  before 
the  year  one  a.d.,  but  its  Spring  of  Perseus,  or  Perseia, 
still  retained  its  youthful  vigor  amid  the  wreckage  of 
what  it  had  seen  built  up  in  its  virgin  valley  to  become  the 
first  city  of  Greece  and  the  residence  of  Agamemnon. 

The  town  was  founded  by  Perseus  who,  having  acci- 
dentally killed  his  grandfather  Acrisius  during  a  game  of 
quoits  while  on  a  visit  in  Thessaly,  returned  to  Greece  in 
very  low  spirits  and,  giving  up  his  former  kingdom, 
started  out  to  divert  his  brooding  thoughts  and  establish 
a  new  capital. 

This  he  did  where  some  water  flowed  out  when  he 
pulled  up  a  fungus,  a  growth  that  in  his  language  was 
called  Mycenae.  That  this  was  the  proper  site  for  his 
new  city  was  fully  confirmed  when  the  scabbard  fell  from 
his  sword  and  slipped  to  the  ground,  an  unusual  happen- 
ing that  was  palpably  a  double  indication  of  what  the 


^  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

city's  name  should  be,  for  mycenae  meant  scabbard  as 
well  as  fungus. 

The  town  of  Argos  was  founded  seven  miles  south  of 
Mycenae,  and  they  are  sometimes  spoken  of  as  though 
they  were  one  city,  each  being  called  by  the  other's  name. 
In  and  between  the  two  towns  there  were  a  number  of 
tombs  of  celebrated  people;  Agamemnon's  was  in  My- 
cense,  and  that  of  his  wife  and  murderess,  Clytemnestra, 
was  considerately  separated  from  his  by  the  city  walls; 
and  between  the  two  towns,  at  a  place  called  The  Rams, 
was  the  tomb  of  Thyestes  whose  children  were  slain  by 
his  brother  Atreus  and  served  up  to  him  at  a  feast. 

The  neighboring  village  of  Kharvati  is  now  supplied 
through  an  aqueduct  with  water  from  a  stream  on  the 
north  side  of  Mycense's  old  acropolis,  and  one  may  fancy 
that  its  source  is  the  age-old  Spring  that  took  the  name 
of  Perseus. 

The  city  of  Argos  lay  three  miles  north  of  the  Argolic 
Gulf. 

Pausanias;   II.  i6. 


46 

Amymone 

The  Fountain  of  Amymone  owed  its  existence  to  two 
cases  of  poor  marksmanship. 

Amymone  having  shot  at  a  stag  and  hit  a  satyr,  he 
while  expressing  his  indignation  was  made  the  mark  for 
Poseidon's  trident;  that  weapon  in  turn  going  astray 
pierced  a  rock  instead  of  the  satyr. 

These  two  incidents  occurred  during  a  search  for  water 
that  Amymone  was  making  at  the  command  of  her  father 
Danaus  who  had  recently  arrived  in  Argos  during  a 
drought  and  a  scarcity  of  water. 


ARGOLIS  S3 

After  making  acknowledgments  for  her  rescue,  Amy- 
mone  pulled  the  trident  from  the  rock  and  was  surprised 
to  see  a  three-stream  Spring  follow  the  weapon's  with- 
drawal. It  should,  however,  not  be  concealed  that  a 
pleasant  impression  of  Poseidon's  gallantry  in  this  case 
must  be  formed  in  the  face  of  some  indications  in  the 
story  that  possibly  he  exacted  the  acknowledgments  as 
inducements  to  show  how  the  water  might  be  obtained. 

The  modern  location  of  this  fountain  is  assimied  to  be 
in  the  neighborhood  rendered  marshy  by  a  nimiber  of 
Springs  and  where  seven  or  eight  of  them,  instead  of  the 
classic  three,  unite  to  form  the  Amymone,  also  called  the 
Lerna  river.  It  broadens  into  a  deep  pool  several  hun- 
dred feet  in  diameter  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  Alcy- 
onian  Marsh  whose  depth  Nero  was  unable  to  fathom. 

Modern  millers,  who  have  walled  the  pool  to  make  a 
waterhead,  also  declare  it  to  be  immeasurably  deep,  as  it 
must  have  been  back  to  the  time  when  Dionysus  de- 
scended through  it  to  the  lower  world  to  recover  his 
mother  Semele,  the  daughter  of  Cadmus,  when  she  was 
stricken  by  Zeus'  brilliancy. 

Danaus  had  come  from  Egypt  to  Argos  to  escape  his 
brother  ^gyptus  who  desired  to  have  his  fifty  sons 
married  to  the  fifty  daughters  of  Danaus,  and  the  latter, 
though  fearing  a  prophecy  that  he  would  come  to  his  end 
at  the  hands  of  a  son-in-law,  was  finally  compelled  to 
consent  to  the  unions;  though  he  secretly  attempted  to 
avert  the  predicted  fate  by  ordering  every  daughter  to 
do  away  with  her  husband  on  the  night  of  the  ceremonies. 
All  of  the  girls  obeyed  except  Lynceus'  bride  Hyperm- 
nestra,  and  the  forty-nine  severed  heads  were  thrown  into 
the  River  Amymone.  It  is  said,  though  it  is  also  denied, 
that  Lynceus  fulfilled  the  prophecy. 

The  sisters  were  doomed  to  expiate  their  wedding 


54  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

night  acts  in  Tartarus  by  forever  trying  to  draw  water  in 

sieves. 

A  commonplace  substitute  for  this  history  has  been 
offered  to  the  effect  that  Danaus  means  drought ;  that  the 
daughters  were  so  many  nymphs  of  Springs  and  their 
spouses  an  equal  number  of  dependent  streams,  whose 
beds  became  empty  when  in  a  period  of  hot  weather  the 
fountains  ceased  to  flow;  and  that  the  punishment  was 
suggested  by  the  sandy  nature  of  the  soil  at  their  sources, 
which  in  time  of  drought  were  said  to  leak. 

Danaus  was  said  to  have  been  the  first  who  taught  the 
Argives  to  dig  Wells,  and  for  his  surveys  locating  the 
Springs  of  Argos  he  was  made  King;  a  reward  that  was 
also  bestowed  on  other  men  whose  discoveries  were  of 
much  value,  and  which  foreshadowed  modern  patent 
rights,  being  in  effect  a  Patent  of  Nobility. 

Another  Hypermnestra  was  the  mother  of  Amphiaraus, 
and  an  unlocated  fountain  that  anciently  bore  his  name 
is  supposed  to  have  been  in  this  neighborhood  which  was 
near  the  seacoast  and  some  five  miles  south  of  the  city  of 
Argos. 

In  the  swamp  of  Lerna  near  the  Spring  of  Amymone 
was  where  dwelt  the  monster  Hydra  one  of  the  offspring 
of  Echidna,  that  mother  of  numerous  freaks,  the  slaying 
of  which  formed  the  second  of  the  twelve  labors  of  Her- 
cules. The  Hydra  was  represented  as  having  a  number  of 
heads  variously  stated  as  from  seven  to  over  a  hundred. 
Pausanias  was  inclined  to  doubt  that  it  really  had  so 
many,  and  in  the  absence  of  Peisander's  works  the  num- 
ber must  still  remain  unfixed.  Peisander  who  antedated 
Hesiod  is  credited  with  having  published  the  most  de- 
tailed history  of  Hercules,  but  little  or  nothing  is  left  of 
it  save  perhaps  the  24th  and  25th  Idylls  of  Theocritus 
which  have  been  attributed  to  the  earlier  poet. 


ARGOLIS  5g 

Between  the  little  river  of  Amymone  and  the  river 
Pontinus  a  sacred  grove  of  plane  trees  extended  from  Mt. 
Pontinus  nearly  to  the  sea;  and  it  was  under  one  of  these 
plane  trees  that  grew  near  the  Spring  that  the  monster 
Hydra  was  reared.  The  identical  tree  was  known  and  it 
shared  for  ages  in  the  awe  that  shivering  strangers  felt 
as  the  glib  guides  of  Argolis  pointed  out  the  exact  spots 
where  the  Lion,  or  the  Dragon,  or  the  Hydra  had  per- 
petrated this  or  that  especially  cruel  deed.  Those  who 
might  look  upon  these  scenes  in  the  fancied  security  of 
terrors  long  passed  away  were  roused  to  a  sense  of  horrors 
still  close  at  hand  by  being  shown  a  nearby  circle  of 
stones  that  marked  the  place  where  Pluto  descended 
to  his  underground  realms. 

While  there  is  no  lack  of  fossil  evidence  that  the  earth 
was  once  cimibered  with  enormous  animals  rivaling  if  not 
exceeding  the  size  of  the  whales  of  the  present  era,  there 
is  no  reason  to  surmise  that  these  monsters  were  known 
to  any  of  the  ancient  races  of  men  whose  records  have 
come  down  through  the  last  ten  thousand  years.  There 
were  seemingly  none  of  them  left  at  the  time  that  Noah 
made  his  collection  for  post-diluvian  perpetuation,  nor  is 
there  even  a  legend  extant  describing  the  remarkable 
m.onsters  as  they  are  known  today  from  the  remains  of 
their  fossilized  femurs  and  the  fragments  of  their  spines. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  unlikely  that  the  exploits  that  are 
viewed  through  the  lenses  of  the  epic  poets  would  appear, 
without  these  magnifying  media,  in  much  the  same 
category  as  the  marvelous  feat  of  Mr.  Jack  Horner  of 
nursery  notoriety. 

Indeed,  some  of  the  contemporaries  of  the  greatest 
heroes  were  the  first  to  rock  the  pedestals  upon  which 
their  earliest  monuments  were  reared;  thus,  King  Lycus, 
in  his  conversation  with  Megara,  the  wife  of  Hercules, 


56  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

makes  it  clear  that  even  the  townsmen  of  the  Greek 
strong  man  were  not  greatly  impressed  by  Hercules' 
heroism  in  "killing  a  water  snake  in  a  marsh, "  a  remark 
that  may  be  much  to  the  credit  of  Lycus'  discretion, 
as  he  made  it  only  to  the  wife,  and  not  until  after  the 
husband  had  gone  crazy. 

ApoUodorus;  II.  i.  §  4. 

Hyginus;   Fable  169. 

Euripides;  Heracles  Mad;  line  150. 


47 
Physadea 

Physadea  was  a  Fountain  in  the  neighborhood  of  Argos. 

On  the  day  set  for  bathing  the  statues  of  the  goddess 
Athena  or  Pallas,  the  Minerva  of  the  Romans,  it  was 
customary  for  the  people  of  Argos  to  drink  Spring  water 
only,  and  not  to  dip  their  vessels  in  the  rivers  whose 
waters  were  used  for  laving  the  statues. 

The  handmaids  were  admonished  to  fill  their  urns  on 
that  particular  day  either  from  the  Fountain  of  Physadea 
or  from  Amymone,  from  which  it  may  be  judged  that  it 
was  at  one  time  a  Fountain  of  prominence,  although  it 
has  not  been  located  in  modern  days;  perhaps  because  it 
bore  merely  a  local  name  given  to  one  of  the  three  Springs 
produced  by  Neptune's  trident  and  which  were  called, 
collectively,  Amymone. 

Callimachus;  Bath  of  Pallas. 


48 

The  Trcezen  Hippocrene 

This  Spring  was  in  Argolis,  at  Troezen,  the  birthplace 
of  Theseus,  now  called  Damala,  and,  though  apparently 


ARGOLIS  57 

lacking  the  guaranty  of  the  Muses  that  the  Hippocrene 
fountain  of  Helicon  enjoyed,  it  was  quite  satisfactorily 
proven  by  very  old  tradition  to  have  originated  from  the 
same  cause,  having  been  pawed  from  the  ground  by 
Pegasus  when  Bellerophon  had  ridden  him  there  to  seek 
the  hand  and  heart  of  .^thra. 

It  was  in  its  vicinity  that  the  unfortunate  Phasdra 
languished  for  love  of  Hippolytus,  the  son  of  Theseus  and 
the  Amazon  Antiope,  whom  his  father  had  left  at  Troezen 
when  he  went  to  marry  Phasdra  and  whom  Pheedra  met 
when  Theseus,  needing  to  be  purified  for  the  murder  of 
Pallas  and  his  sons,  selected  Troezen  for  the  ceremonies. 
No  doubt  on  that  occasion  he  used  the  water  of  Hippo- 
crene as  Orestes  had  done  before  him,  during  his  proba- 
tion and  trial  and  purification  after  the  murder  of  his 
mother.  Nine  men  tried  and  acquitted  Orestes,  and  the 
large  white  stone  that  they  sat  upon  was  carefully  pre- 
served in  front  of  the  temple  at  Troezen. 

Theseus,  from  the  age  of  seven,  when  he  first  saw 
Hercules,  was  fired  with  ambition  to  emulate  the  hero's 
deeds,  and  his  life  in  consequence  became  a  series  of 
adventures. 

He  was  a  many-sided  character  witn  a  mania  for  carry- 
ing off  ladies  from  their  homes,  even  going,  unsuccess- 
fully, on  one  occasion,  to  Hades  to  steal  Proserpine  for 
Pirithous. 

He  married  a  niunber  of  the  beauties,  and  the  revelries 
at  his  wedding  with  Antiope  the  Queen  of  the  Amazons, 
whom  the  writer  calls  Hippolyta,  are  the  theme  of  A 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  In  the  knight's  tale  Chau- 
cer lauds  him  but  one  cannot  lightly  forgive  him  for 
marooning  Ariadne  instead  of  marrying  her,  when  it  was 
only  her  gift  of  the  sword  and  her  spool  of  thread  that 
made  possible  his  escape  from  the  labyrinth  of  Crete. 


^8  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

Theseus  was  unable  to  hold  the  Kingship  of  Athens 
that  came  to  him  from  his  Father  ^geus,  but  his  fellow 
townspeople  of  Troezen  seem  to  have  continued  to  vener- 
ate him  long  after  his  death,  and  anything  connected 
with  him  or  the  members  of  his  family  was  preserved  and 
exhibited  with  pride  by  the  trusting  people  among  whom 
he  was  born.  They  loved  him  for  the  deeds  by  which  they 
benefited;  before  his  time  the  roads  around  their  town 
had  been  infested  with  robbers  and  other  most  villainous 
characters,  all  of  whom  he  did  away  with,  using,  with  a 
Samson-like  humor,  their  own  contrivances  with  which  to 
punish  them.  Sinus  was  a  heartless  monster  whose  chief 
enjoyment  it  was  to  bend  together  two  stout  pine  trees 
and  then  let  them  fly  apart  when  he  had  tied  the  heels  of  a 
traveler  to  one  and  his  neck  to  the  other.  Theseus  tore  him 
in  two  in  the  selfsame  way. 

He  also  put  an  end  to  the  pranks  of  Polypemon,  better 
known  as  Procrustes,  who  took  a  demonish  delight  in 
accurately  adapting  all  lengths  of  body  to  the  only  bed 
that  he  provided  for  every  one  of  his  victims,  cutting  the 
long,  and  stretching  the  short,  to  make  them  fill  the 
space  between  the  pillow  and  the  footboard. 

Among  the  Theseus  family  relics  that  the  people  of 
Troezen  preserved  was  the  temple  of  Peeping  Aphrodite 
in  which  Phaedra  fed  her  affection,  by  gazing  out  upon 
the  race  course  that  it  overlooked,  when  Hippolytus  was 
training  to  keep  himself  in  condition.  Another  relic  was 
a  marvelous  maple  bush  with  lacelike  leaves,  each  one 
filled  with  punctures  that  Phaedra  had  made  with  a  hair- 
pin while  venting  the  despairing  agonies  of  her  misplaced 
love. 

Near  this  bush  the  tomb  of  the  unhappy  woman  was 
constructed,  and  when  she  could  no  longer  make  lace 
work  in  the  maple  leaves  her  spirit  could  watch  the  sym- 


ARGOLIS  59- 

pathetic  waters  of  Hippocrene  fretting  the  surface  of  the 
Spring  with  their  bubbles. 

Pausanias;  II.  3i' 


49 
The  Well  of  Hercules 

(Troezen) 

Troezen  had  another  noted  Spring;  it  rose  in  front  of 
the  house  of  Hippolytus  and  was  called  The  Well  of 
Hercules,  because,  it  was  said,  that  hero  was  the  one  who 
discovered  it. 

The  Troezenians  had  a  brook  which  they  named  Chry- 
sorrhoe,  the  Golden  Stream,  but  it  is  not  stated  whether 
this  Spring  or  that  of  Hippocrene  was  the  source  of  the 
brook  which  was  given  its  pretentious  name  because  in 
a  period  of  drought  lasting  nine  years,  when  all  other 
streams  dried  up,  this  one  continued  to  flow  without 
diminution. 

More  remarkable,  however,  than  the  ever  flowing 
fountain  was  the  history  of  a  tree  that  grew  before  the 
statue  of  Hermes  and  which  adds  an  interesting  feature 
to  the  biography  of  Hercules,  and  furnishes  the  fact  that 
he  made  his  club  from  the  wood  of  the  wild  olive,  for  the 
tree  before  the  statue  sprang  from  the  original  weapon 
wielded  in  a  thousand  exploits  the  memory  of  which 
is  endeared  to  the  hearts  of  all  learned  worshipers  of 
muscular  prowess. 

The  club,  which  had  been  cut  from  a  tree  in  the  Saron- 
ian  marsh,  having  been  presented  as  an  offering  to  the 
god,  was  propped  against  the  statue,  and,  respected  alike 
by  hunters  of  relics  and  of  fuel;  in  due  time  it  took  root, 
and,  with  even  more  vitality  than  the  blossoming  rod  of 


6«y  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

Aaron,  it  grew  to  a  full-sized  wild  olive  tree,  showing  a 
vigor  nothing  short  of  marvelous  in  a  weapon  that  had 
seen  such  long  usage  and  hard  service. 

An  effort  appears  to  have  been  made  by  Amphiaraus 
to  have  this  Spring  called  after  him,  but  the  claim  of 
prior  discovery  seems  to  have  secured  the  Spring's  right 
to  help  to  bear  the  hero's  name  to  posterity. 

Pausanias;  II.  32. 


50 

Hycessa 

The  Fountain  called  Hyoessa  was  near  Troezen  and 
was  one  of  the  sources  of  the  river  Taurus  which  Athen- 
aeus  notes  was  called  Bull's  Water  by  Sophocles  in  his 
play  of  ^geus. 

Several  bulls  had  prominent  parts  in  episodes  related 
of  the  family  of  King  -^geus;  the  Marathonian  bull,  and 
the  Cretan  bull  or  Minotaur,  bull-headed  and  man- 
bodied,  were  slain  by  iEgeus'  son  Theseus  who  long 
before  the  siege  of  Troy  impressed  the  form  of  an  ox  on 
the  money  he  issued.  A  third  bull,  however,  turned  the 
tables  by  frightening  the  horses  of  Hippolytus  who  lost 
his  life  (or  one  of  his  lives,  for  he  was  resuscitated  by 
.^sculapius)  in  the  runaway  that  resulted.  The  play  of 
Sophocles  may  have  given  an  account  of  the  connection 
between  one  of  these  animals  and  the  stream  fed  by  the 
Spring  of  Hyoessa,  but  unfortunately  it  is  one  of  the  123 
lost  works  that  the  author  wrote  some  five  hundred  years 
before  the  Christian  era,  and  the  account  has  perished 
with  the  play. 

The  Spring  was  near  Theseus'  Rock  under  which  he 
found  his  father's  sword  and  shoes. 


ARGOLIS  6f 

The  Taurus  was  afterwards  given  the  name  Hyllicus, 
and  is  now  known  as  Potami. 

Pausanias;  II.  32. 
Athenseus;  III.  95. 


51 

Inachus 

Pausanias  states  that  the  sources  of  the  Inachus  were 
in  Mt.  Artemisium,  but  his  brief  addition,  "though  they 
flow  underground  for  some  way,"  scarcely  conveys  an 
adequate  impression  of  the  lengthy  land,  sea,  and  under- 
ground voyage  that  others  give  the  river  the  credit  of 
having  performed. 

Its  first  sources  were  in  the  mountain  range  of  Pindus 
that  formed  the  boundary  between  Thessaly  and  Epirus, 
from  which  range  it  flowed  into  the  Ionian  Sea  on  the 
west  and,  pushing  its  way  through  the  waves,  passed  under 
the  Peloponnesus  and  ascended  through  Mt.  Artemisium, 
which  formed  the  boundary  between  Argolis  and  Arcadia, 
until  it  reached  one  of  its  elevations  called  Lyrceium 
where  it  burst  out,  near  the  town  of  CEnoe,  as  a  fresh- 
water Spring  showing  no  evidences  of  its  briny  passage. 

The  town  was  named  after  the  grandfather  of  Dio- 
medes  who  buried  him  there  after  treating  him  "as  well 
as  one  would  expect  a  person  to  treat  his  grandfather." 

Strabo  considered  the  voyage  of  the  Inachus  a  fiction 
invented  by  Sophocles,  in  one  of  his  plays  that  has  not 
been  preserved,  and  preferred  to  attribute  the  trip  to  the 
name,  which  he  believed  a  colony  had  carried  from  Argolis 
and  bestowed  on  the  stream  from  the  mountain  in  Thessaly. 

Greek  traditions  vary,  as  Pausanias  mildly  expressed 
it,  and  for  that  reason  a  good  story  is  often  marred  by 
another  version  that  contradicts  it. 


62  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

The  contradictions  probably  arose  in  many  instances 
from  misunderstandings  such  as  occur  daily  through 
attaching  to  a  word  a  meaning  not  intended  by  the 
original  author;  but  another  prolific  cause  of  variations 
was  evidently,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Inachus,  the  mistaking 
of  one  person,  place,  river  or  other  natural  feature  for 
another  that  bore  the  same  name,  although  the  persons 
lived  in  different  generations,  or  the  places  were  situated 
in  different  parts  of  Greece,  or  even  in  other  countries. 

The  Inachus  of  Argolis  is  now  known  as  the  Banitza. 

Pausanias;  II.  2$. 
Strabo;  VI.  2.  §4- 


52 

Treton 

On  the  top  of  Mt.  Treton  there  was  a  Spring  which  was 
colder  than  snow,  so  cold,  indeed,  that  people  were  afraid 
to  drink  of  it  fearing  that  they  would  freeze  if  they  did  so. 

King  Ptolemy  mentioned  the  Spring  in  his  Commen- 
taries, and  satisfied  himself  of  its  temperature  by  fear- 
lessly taking  a  draught  of  it. 

It  rose  at  the  side  of  the  carriage  road  called  Contoporia 
which  ran  between  Mycenae  and  Cleonas.  The  mountain 
it  crossed  was  a  haunt  of  the  Nemean  lion  until  it  was 
killed  by  Hercules. 

Athenseus;  II.  19. 


53 
Springs  of  the  Asopus 

There  was  much  more  than  met  the  casual  eye  in  the 
Springs  of  the  Asopus. 


ARGOLIS  63 

They  appeared  to  be  at  Phlius;  that  is,  an  observer 
tracing  the  river's  dwindHng  course  from  the  town  of 
Sicyon,  where  it  flowed  into  the  Gulf  of  Corinth,  and 
following  its  banks  to  the  south,  would  have  seen  it 
making  its  appearance  near  the  city  of  Phlius,  and,  re- 
garding it  in  no  manner  as  a  River  of  Doubt,  would  have 
gone  his  way  satisfied  that  he  had  seen  the  river's  first 
source. 

The  good  people  of  Phlius,  however,  had  another  view 
about  it. 

A  fondness  for  something  different,  whether  for  times 
passed  or  for  foreign  products,  may  be  innate  in  the 
human  race,  and  there  were  several  instances  of  peoples 
who  were  apparently  not  satisfied  with  a  home-grown 
river  and  were  ready  with  plenty  of  proof  to  convince 
visitors  that  the  Springs  they  were  looking  at  were 
merely  an  episode  in  their  river's  course,  and  that  the 
stream  originated  abroad  and  in  some  country  beyond 
the  seas. 

The  people  of  Delos  boasted  that  their  river  Inopus 
was  really  the  Nile  rising  among  them  after  a  long  under- 
ground journey  from  Africa.  Even  the  Euphrates  was 
said  to  be  a  reincarnation  of  the  Nile  after  dropping  out 
of  Ethiopian  existence  through  a  lake. 

And  the  Phliusians  were  proud  to  boast  that  the 
Asopus  was  a  foreign  and  not  an  indigenous  stream;  that 
it  was  in  fact  imported  by  a  very  circuitous  route  from 
Phrygia  and  was  none  other  than  the  River  Ma^ander 
shipped  from  Miletus  under  sea  to  the  Peloponnese,  the 
name  given  to  that  part  of  Greece,  south  of  the  Corin- 
thian Gulf. 

In  early  times  the  people  had  been  content  to  consider 
the  Asopus  a  purely  domestic  river,  as  on  its  face  it 
seemed  to  be,  that  had  been  discovered  by  one  Asopus,  a 


64  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

contemporary  of  Aras  an  Autochthon  and  the  first 
person  who  lived  in  their  country. 

It  seems  possible  that  the  name  itself  was  imported, 
but  only  from  Boeotia,  just  across  the  Gulf  of  Corinth, 
where  there  was  another  river  Asopus. 

Afterwards  it  was  equally  as  easy  to  transfer  the  river 
as  it  had  been  to  transfer  the  name,  and  no  less  easy  to 
manufacture  proof,  which  was  done  by  placing  in  the 
Temple  of  Apollo  at  Sicyon,  along  with  the  spear  that 
Meleager  used  in  slaying  the  Calydonian  boar,  and  other 
precious  relics,  the  original  flutes  of  Marsyas,  which, 
after  his  unsuccessful  musical  contest  with  Apollo,  were 
dropped  in  the  Marsyas  river,  and  thence  carried  into  the 
Masander  from  which  they  reappeared  in  the  Asopus  and 
were  rescued  at  the  very  moment  when  they  were  floating 
out  into  the  harbor  of  Sicyon  on  their  way  to  the  sea  and 
to  oblivion. 

Their  rescuer  was  an  honest  shepherd  with  the  shep- 
herd's well-known  fondness  for  pipes,  and  he  recognized 
the  historical  instruments  at  once  and  gave  them  to 
Apollo. 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  such  a  remarkable  connoisseur  in 
flutes,  and  that  a  poor  shepherd  to  whom  any  collector 
would  have  given  wealth  for  his  find,  should  have  to  be 
referred  to  merely  as  "a  shepherd"  and  cannot  be  called 
by  name,  for  his  name,  if  ever  known,  is  lost,  and,  so  far 
as  appears  in  the  accounts,  his  honesty  was  his  only  re- 
ward though  on  the  strength  of  that  honesty  alone  a  very 
small  river  became  as  remarkable  in  one  respect  as  the 
giant  Nile. 

In  the  back  part  of  the  market  place  of  Phlius  there 
was  a  dwelling  called  the  Seer's  House  where  Amphiaraus 
first  form.ulated  the  principles  of  Oneirocrisy  which  made 
him  famous  and  which  is  the  subject  of  considerable 


ARGOLIS  6s 

literature  even  at  the  present  day.  And  near  that  ven- 
erable house  was  a  spot  named  Omphalus  which  the 
Phliusians  are  said  to  have  said  was  the  center  of  all  the 
Peloponnese,  though  perhaps  that  was  a  slip  of  a  tongue 
that  should  have  said,  Greece. 

The  Asopus  became  a  never  failing  stream  for  the 
genealogists  of  the  families  within  miles  of  the  river,  one 
into  which  every  ancestor  seeker  could  plunge  with  the 
certainty  of  reaching  the  source  of  the  line  he  was  at  work 
on,  and  that  source  was  more  than  often  Asopus  himself. 

The  Asopus  is  now  known  as  the  river  of  St.  George. 

Pausanias;  II.  5.  7.  12. 


54 

Erasinus 

Through  an  arch-roofed  recess  that  extended  nearly 
two  hundred  feet  into  the  side  of  Mt.  Chaon,  the  Springs 
of  the  Erasinus  River  gushed  out  where  a  grateful  grove 
that  they  nourished  to  exuberance  kept  the  waters  cool 
and  offered  the  twittering  birds  a  pleasing  shade  in  the 
heats  of  summer,  and  a  refuge  from  the  storms  of  wild  and 
windy  days  in  winter. 

These  Springs  immediately  formed  a  sturdy  river 
whose  course  though  short  was  full  of  labor  and  therefore 
called  The  Mills  of  Argos,  from  the  number  of  wheels 
turned  by  its  rapid  and  tireless  current  which  persevered 
throughout  the  year  and  when  many  other  weaker 
streams  had  become  exhausted. 

The  Erasinus  was  said  to  be  a  reappearance  of  the 
Arcadian  river  Stymphalus  which  dropped  out  of  sight 
under  Mt.  Apelauron  and  traveled  through  the  earth 
for  twenty-five  miles  before  coming  out  again  under  Mt. 
Chaon. 


66  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

These  Springs  of  the  river  they  christened  were  some- 
what north  of  the  town  of  Cenchreas  perhaps  named  for 
that  son  of  Peirene  at  whose  loss  she  wept  herself  into 
that  celebrated  Fountain  of  Corinth  by  whose  name  the 
Delphic  oracle  was  wont  to  refer  to  the  city,  rather  than 
by  its  geographical  designation. 

The  river  is  now  called  Kephalari  but  continues  to  be 
the  only  stream  in  the  Plain  of  Argos  that  flows  through- 
out the  year;  neither  has  any  change  been  found  in  the 
Springs  and  their  grotto  as  described  twenty  centuries  ago. 

Pausanias;  II.  24. 


55 
Springs  of  the  Hyllicus 

Some  of  the  Springs  of  the  river  Hyllicus,  originally 
called  the  Taurus  or  Taurius,  were  in  the  mountains 
through  which  ran  the  road  from  Troezen  to  Hermione. 

Near  them  was  the  temple  where  Theseus  was  said  to 
have  married  Helen  of  Troy;  and  also  the  rock  under 
which  he  found  the  sword  of  his  father  ^geus,  the  rec- 
ognition of  which  saved  Theseus'  life  when  his  father,  who 
had  not  seen  him  since  infancy,  not  knowing  who  he  was, 
was  about  to  give  him  a  poisoned  draught  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  his  stepmother  Medea.     (See  Hyoessa,  No.  50.) 

Pausanias;  II.  32. 


56 

Methana 

About  thirty  stadia  from  Methana  there  were  some 
Springs  of  such  heat  that  they  warmed  the  waters  of  the 
Saronic  Gulf  into  which  they  flowed. 


ARGOLIS  67 

These  Springs  had  their  beginning  in  a  blaze  of  glory, 
for,  at  a  time  when  their  site  was  dry,  a  flame  burst 
suddenly  from  the  ground  and  formed  an  imposing  pillar 
of  fire;  then,  after  the  column  had  burned  itself  away,  the 
waters  began  to  flow  and  afterwards  continued  per- 
manently to  bubble  up,  very  warm  and  very  salt,  and 
creating  a  mild  temperature  that  attracted  many  sorts  of 
ocean  monsters,  especially  sea  dogs,  that  made  it  danger- 
ous for  anyone  to  attempt  to  swim  in  the  vicinity. 

The  eruption  cast  up  a  mountain  half  a  mile  high,  and 
caused  such  heat  and  sulphureous  smells  that  the  place 
was  unapproachable  by  day,  for,  strange  to  say,  at  night 
the  odor  became  agreeable.  The  volcanic  fires  cast  their 
lights  to  great  distances  and  made  the  sea  boil,  for  half  a 
mile  from  the  shore,  so  violently  that  the  agitation  ex- 
tended for  two  miles  beyond. 

This  disturbance  occurred  some  250  years  B.C.,  but  the 
Springs  are  still  hot  and  sulphureous;  there  are  two  of 
them  now  known  as  Vroma  and  Vromolimni,  in  the  small 
peninsula  north  of  Damala,  and  they  are  of  especial 
interest  on  account  of  their  origin,  for  although  the 
Peloponnesus  has  often  suffered  from  earthquakes  and 
tidal  waves  there  are  few  traces  of  volcanic  action  in  any 
part  of  it  except  in  the  neighborhood  of  these  Springs. 

Pausanias;  II.  34. 
Strabo;  I.  3.     §  18. 


57 
Wells  of  Hermione 

The  people  of  the  town  of  Hermione  had  two  Wells. 

Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  older  one  of  these 
wells  was  of  such  magnitude  and  copiousness  that  the 
whole  population  could  never  have  exhausted  it,  they 


68  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

rather  strangely  went  to  the  trouble  of  digging  the  second 
well  which  tapped  a  stream  flowing  from  a  place  called 
Meadow. 

The  water  of  the  old  Well  flowed  into  it  by  a  hidden 
channel. 

Hermione  was  at  the  southern  limits  of  Argolis  where 
there  is  now  a  little  village  called  Kastri.  It  contained 
the  sanctuary  of  Clymenus  surrounded  with  a  stone  fence 
that  enclosed  the  entrance  to  a  short  cut  and  inexpensive 
route  to  Hades  which  was  so  quickly  reached  from  Her- 
mione that  its  people  never  placed  in  the  mouths  of  their 
departed  friends  any  fee  for  the  ferryman  Charon,  an 
expense  for  which  the  bereaved  among  all  other  Grecians 
were  obliged  to  make  provision. 

Pausanias;  II.  35. 


58 

Well  of  Canathus 

Nauplia  was  deserted  and  in  ruins  two  thousand  years 
ago,  when  all  that  was  left  of  it  were  vestiges  of  the  walls 
and  of  a  Temple  of  Poseidon,  and  this  Well  of  Canathus. 

The  identifier  frequently  has  reason  to  give  thanks  for 
the  aid  that  the  persistency  of  Springs  affords  him. 
Where  a  city  has  crimibled  to  rubbish  and  its  stones  have 
perhaps  been  stolen  to  start  a  new  town  in  another  local- 
ity— when  nothing  is  left  of  the  work  of  the  men  who  con- 
structed the  city,  its  site  may  often  still  be  identified  by 
the  authenticating  autograph  the  fountain  pen  of  Nature 
still  traces  with  the  water  of  its  ever  flowing  Spring. 

But  in  the  instance  of  this  old  town,  Hera's  habit  also 
helped  to  point  out  what  was  once  Nauplia,  for,  until 
Grecian  faith  in  her  existence  was  lost,  she  continued  her 


ARGOLIS  69 

ancient  practice  of  repairing  yearly  to  the  Spring  of 
Canathus  to  bathe  in  it  and  become  a  virgin  again. 

On  a  neighboring  rock  there  was  carved  the  figure  of 
an  ass  to  commemorate  the  fact  that  his  fondness  for 
gnawing  the  twigs  of  the  grape  vines  first  taught  man  the 
benefit  of  pruning  them  to  bring  about  a  more  abundant 
yield  of  fruit. 

The  history  of  the  town  of  Nauplia  offers  a  striking 
instance  of  rejuvenations  which,  according  to  individual 
fancy,  may  be  considered  accidental  coincidences  or  as 
confirmations  of  the  restorative  powers  that  Hera  found 
in  the  Well  of  Canathus. 

Named  by  Nauplius,  a  son  of  Poseidon  and  Amymone, 
it  became  a  city  of  independence. 

Then  its  citizens  were  driven  away  by  the  Argives  and 
it  lapsed  into  nonentity  and  fell  into  ruin. 

In  the  Middle  Ages,  however,  it  showed  new  signs  of 
life;  but  in  1205  it  suffered  in  a  successful  siege  by  the 
Franks. 

Two  hundred  years  later  it  was  captured  by  the  Vene- 
tians; and  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  that  it  fell  into 
the  hands  of  the  Turks. 

A  century  and  a  half  later,  the  Greeks  recaptured  it 
and  not  only  restored  it  but  made  it  the  seat  of  the  na- 
tional government,  which  it  continued  to  be  until  1834 
when  Athens  acquired  the  honor. 

It  is  additionally  strange  to  find  it  described  a  few 
years  ago  not  only  as  having  one  of  the  strongest  for- 
tresses in  Europe,  but  as  looking  more  like  a  REAL 
town  than  any  other  place  with  that  designation  in 
Greece. 

And  even  its  ancient  name,  received  from  Amymone's 
son,  has  been  restored. 

Pausanias;  II.  38. 


70  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

59 
Wells  and  Fountains  of  -^sculapius 

The  principal  Well  of  ^sculapius  was  in  his  native 
town  of  Epidaurus  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Argolis ;  it  was 
in  the  temple,  and  his  throne  and  statue  were  set  over  the 
Well,  which  provided  enough  moisture  to  keep  the  ivory 
from  checking — in  dry  temples  it  was  customary  to 
sprinkle  ivory  statues  with  water,  and  in  damp  temples  to 
rub  them  with  oil  to  preserve  them.  ..-^ 

But  other  wells  of  the  first  physician,  with  nearly  loo 
shrines,  were  found  in  profusion  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  Greece,  all  dedicated  to  him  and  bearing 
his  name,  and  if  other  testimony  were  lacking  they  alone 
would  furnish  ample  proof  of  the  monopoly  in  medicine 
that  he  enjoyed. 

These  wells  indicate  that  he  very  carefully  canvassed 
the  country  in  person  and  had  his  name  attached  to  them 
with  a  full  appreciation  of  the  value  of  advertising,  of 
which  he  might  be  called  the  discoverer  without  fear  of 
raising  a  counter-claimant.  They  bring  to  mind  the 
private  mile  boards  that  picket  so  many  modern  rail- 
ways and  apprize  the  passengers  from  minute  to  minute 
that  they  are  so  many  stadia  nearer  the  celebrated  em- 
porium of  such  a  one  in  the  city  indicated.  Travelers  in 
Greece  had  merely  to  follow  the  Wells  of  .^sculapius  to 
come  in  due  course  to  the  seaport  from  which  to  embark 
for  his  office  in  Epidaurus,  to  which  place  whole  cargoes 
of  clients  were  wont  to  set  sail  to  consult  him,  and  from 
which  they  usually  returned  carrying  in  the  hold  of  the 
vessel  a  dragon,  which  the  famous  physician  seems  to 
have  been  in  the  habit  of  dispensing  in  lieu  of  drugs. 

In  those  days  when  open  air  existence  was  the  rule, 
and  when  some  men  still  lived  like  Nestor  for  several 


ARGOLIS  71, 

generations,  the  ills  of  poisoned  arrows  were  perhaps 
only  less  prevalent  than  those  of  disease,  and  as  a  dragon 
was  but  a  snake  the  ancients  may  have  known  how  to 
make  a  counteracting  serum  from  vEsculapius'  stock,  as 
the  Brazilian  does  from  the  South  American  rattlesnake. 

It  was  never  too  late  to  be  taken  to  ^sculapius,  for  it 
was  no  uncommon  belief  that  he  had  even  restored  the 
dead  to  life. 

Among  the  resuscitated  whose  names  and  addresses 
were  given  are :  Androgeus,  son  of  King  Minos ;  Capaneus ; 
Glaucus;  Hymensus,  killed  by  the  collapse  of  his  house 
on  his  wedding  day;  Hippolitus;  Lycurgus,  the  son  of 
Pronax;  and  Tyndarus. 

But  even  advertising  may  be  carried  too  far  and  ex- 
haust the  capital,  as  the  Epidaurian  doctor  found  to  his 
cost,  for  his  own  death  was  due  to  his  crowning  claim  of 
being  a  life  restorer ;  it  raised  the  apprehensions  of  Pluto 
who  foresaw  that  such  skill  would  soon  put  his  ferry  out 
of  business  and  prevent  any  increase  in  the  number  of 
inhabitants  in  his  underground  Kingdom  of  Hades — and 
Zeus,  at  Pluto's  earnest  solicitation,  slew  ^Esculapius  with 
a  flash  of  lightning. 

The  train  of  events  that  followed  that  flash  endured 
for  a  year,  for  Apollo  having  craftily  ferreted  out  the 
individual  Cyclops  who  fashioned  the  bolt,  bow-and- 
arrowed  him;  and  Jupiter,  angered  at  this  indirect  shot 
at  himself,  condemned  Apollo  to  serve  for  twelve  months 
as  a  bondman,  and  he  was  indentured  to  King  Admetus 
of  Thessaly. 

The  account  adds  the  intimate  detail  that  the  monarch 
made  the  god  a  swineherd  on  the  banks  of  the  river 
Amphrysos,  but  does  not  state  to  whom  was  delegated 
the  duty  of  conducting  the  chariot  of  the  Sun  during 
Apollo's  year  of  service. 


72  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

Had  the  great  doctor  disclosed  the  secret  of  Hfe,  his 
students  would  have  been  able  to  make  use  of  it  in  his 
own  behalf,  and  the  moral  is,  therefore,  more  than  a  hint 
to  all  secretive  inventors.  The  fact  that  his  disciples  did 
not  restore  him  to  life  invalidates  the  malicious  rumor 
that  in  raising  the  dead  he  used  the  blood  from  the  veins 
of  the  right  side  of  Medusa,  and  that  he  killed  people 
with  the  blood  from  her  left  side. 

.^sculapius,  who  perhaps  considered  such  a  disclosure 
quite  unnecessary  for  his  own  benefit,  would,  however, 
have  done  well  to  provide  for  accidents  which  no  medical 
power  can  avert,  such  as  the  flash  of  lightning,  and  hun- 
dreds of  minor  mischances  of  daily  occurrence,  through 
one  of  which  a  descendant  of  .^sculapius  came  to  grief. 
Asclepiades  was  the  descendant's  name,  and  so  great  was 
his  confidence  in  his  skill  that  he  laid  a  wager  that  he 
would  never  be  even  sick ;  a  wager  that  the  recorder  dryly 
states  he  won — as  he  met  his  death  by  falling  down- 
stairs. 

Apollo's  interest  in  revenging  the  death  of  the  Doctor 
may  be  accounted  for  by  either  of  two  rumors;  one,  that 
he  was  the  father  of  .^sculapius;  and  the  other,  that 
Hymenasus  whom  the  physician  restored  to  life  was  one 
of  Apollo's  sons.  But  it  is  less  easy  to  surmise  why  Hy- 
men, as  the  unfortunate  youth  is  generally  called,  whose 
wedding  day  was  so  very  inauspicious,  should  have  been 
made  the  god  of  marriage  at  whose  altar  all  happy  lovers 
still  continue  to  address  their  vows,  although  perhaps  few 
of  them  are  aware  that  he  was  but  the  bridegroom  of  a 
day. 

The  Temple  of  .^sculapius  was  outside  of  the  town  of 
Epidaurus  (which  received  its  name  from  its  founder,  a 
son  of  Pelops)  in  a  sacred  grove  which  was  walled  in  on 
all  sides.    In  the  grove  there  was  a  Fountain  well  worth 


ARGOLIS  73 

seeing  because  of  its  decorations  and  the  roof  that  had 
been  raised  above  it ;  and  about  it  were  numerous  pillars 
on  which  were  recorded  the  names  and  the  maladies  of 
those  whom  ^sculapius  had  cured. 

The  grounds  of  the  temple  near  the  present  village  of 
Pidhavro  are  covered  with  ruins  that  have  not  yet  been 
thoroughly  investigated,  but  many  of  the  testimonial 
tablets  have  been  brought  to  light,  and  the  Temple  Well 
has  been  found  and  restored  to  its  ancient  condition.  It 
is  fifty-five  feet  deep  and  is  still  supplied  from  its  former 
underground  source. 

Some  portions  of  the  source  of  a  brook  have  also  been 
uncovered,  and  they  are  in  all  probability  parts  of  the 
channel  through  which  ran  the  water  of  the  Fountain 
whose  decorations  were  a  striking  feature  in  the  grounds 
that  surround  the  temple.     (See  No.  103.) 

Pausanias;  II.  27. 


60 

Dine 

The  Fountain  of  Dine  rose  in  the  sea  near  a  place  called 
Genethlium. 

It  was  a  Spring  of  fresh  and  sweet  water,  sacred  to 
Poseidon,  and  sacrifices  of  bridled  horses  were  offered  to 
him  there,  apparently  by  throwing  the  ready-to-ride 
animals  into  the  Spring. 

Nearby  was  a  spot  of  as  great  interest  to  the  Greeks 
as  the  Pilgrims'  Rock  became  to  Americans,  because  it 
was  there  that  Danaus  disembarked  with  his  fifty 
daughters  when  he  first  came  to  the  Peloponnesus  from 
Chemnis  in  Egypt. 

The  surrounding  country  was  named  Pyramia,  from 


J4  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

the  number  of  pyramidal  monimients  that  were  scattered 
over  its  surface. 

The  Spring  is  now  called  Anavalos.  It  is  some  five 
miles  south  of  Amymone  and  appears  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
off  shore,  gushing  up  with  such  force  as  to  form  a  mound 
of  water  and  set  the  sea  in  commotion  for  several  hundred 
feet  around  it.  Mariners  are  said  to  supply  their  vessels 
from  this  Sea  Spring  with  less  trouble  than  it  would  be  to 
water  from  a  land-locked  Fountain,  using,  perhaps,  some 
means  similar  to  those  employed  by  the  sailors  who  water 
at  the  Spring  of  Aradus.     (See  No.  355.) 

Pausanias;  VIII.  7.  &  H-  38. 


LACONIA 
6i 

^SCULAPIUS 

The  district  of  Laconia  had  several  Springs  that  were 
dedicated  to  ^sculapius,  and  it  had  a  town,  Epidaurus, 
named  after  his  birthplace  in  Argolis,  which  was  founded 
by  a  shipload  of  his  patients  who  were  driven  there  in  a 
storm.  They  had  the  usual  ^sculapian  prescription  of  a 
dragon  with  them,  and  when  it  made  its  escape  from  the 
ship  and  darted  into  a  hole  in  the  ground  they  were  con- 
vinced by  visions  and  the  dragon's  strange  behavior  that 
they  should  stay  and  make  a  settlement,  which  they 
accordingly  did. 

One  of  his  Springs  was  at ; — 

Pausanias;  III.  23. 


62 

Gythium, 

where  he  had  a  Fountain  and  a  shrine  and  a  brazen 
statue. 

Three  furlongs  from  the  town  there  was  a  white  stone 
upon  which  Orestes  was  said  to  have  sat  to  be  cured 
of  his  madness;  the  "old  man"  that  the  townspeople 
talked  about  was,  however,  not  Orestes  but  the  original 
"Old  Man  of  the  Sea,"  Nereus,  though  what  they  said 
about  him  Pausanias  tantalizingly  refrains  from  stating. 

75 


76  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

Gythium  was  a  short  distance  to  the  west  of  the  mouth 
of  the  River  Eurotas. 

Thirty  stadia  from  Gythium  was  the  small  town  of 
^gise  that  had  a  remarkable  body  of  water  called  Posei- 
don's Marsh,  in  the  neighborhood  of  which  mushroom 
mining  stock  companies  of  those  days  probably  found  a 
fertile  field  for  their  operations.  The  Marsh  though  full 
of  fine  fish  was  given  a  wide  berth  by  all  the  progenitors 
of  Isaac  Walton,  and  none  of  the  beauties  was  ever  either 
eaten  or  caught  because  of  a  general  and  unchallenged 
belief  that  anyone  who  cast  a  line  or  a  net  into  the 
uncanny  waters  would  immediately  himself  become 
a  fish. 

Opposite  the  city  of  Gythium  lay  the  small  island  of 
Cranas,  and  a  shrewd,  foresighted  statesman  who  scanned 
the  shipping  news  from  its  little  port  on  a  memorable 
morning  in  the  year  1195  B.C.  would  have  known  at  once 
that  he  was  reading  the  opening  paragraph  in  the  history 
of  the  Siege  of  Troy  when  he  saw,  in  the  list  of  pas- 
sengers who  had  sailed  the  day  before,  the  names  of 
Paris  and  Helen,  who  had  fled  to  the  island  in  all  haste 
and  immediately  embarked  for  the  city  their  escapade 
doomed. 

Little  is  left  of  Gythium  but  its  Spring,  and  the  Seat  of 
Orestes  which  is  indicated  by  a  chair  carved  in  a  wayside 
rock  a  short  distance  from  Marathonisi. 

Another  Spring  of  .ffisculapius  was  at ; — 


63 
Pellanis 

The  only  notable  objects  here  were  the  Temple  of 
iEsculapius  and  the  Fountain  of  Pellanis.     This  was  a 


LACONIA  7| 

large  Spring  into  which  a  nameless  maiden  fell  when  she 
was  filling  her  water  jug.  The  maiden  disappeared  but  the 
veil  she  had  worn  was  found  in  another  fountain  called; — 


64 
Lancea, 

of  which  nothing  is  related  save  that  it  received  the  lost 
veil  of  the  maiden  who  was  drowned  in  the  Fountain  of 
Pellanis. 

The  Springs  of  Pellanis  and  Lancea  are  supposed  to 
be  two  about  seven  miles  from  New  Sparta  (on  the  site  of 
ancient  Sparta) ;  the  streams  from  them  unite  and  flow 
into  the  nearby  Eurotas  river. 

Pausanias;  III.  21.     (Gythium) 
Pausanias;  III.  21.     (Pellanis) 
Pausanias;  III.  21.    (Lancea) 


65 

DORCEA 

The  Fountain  of  Dorcea  at  Sparta  was  an  adjunct  of 
the  temple  of  Dorceus  who  aroused  the  anger  of  Hercules 
and  was  probably  killed  by  the  hero. 

The  fountain,  if  there  was  anything  notable  about  it, 
has  lost  its  history  in  the  more  absorbing  story  of  Sparta 
itself  which  has  become  a  synonym  for  all  that  is  rugged, 
as  was  even  its  speech  which  was  said  to  be  the  least 
euphonious  of  all  the  Grecian  dialects. 

The  renown  of  such  of  its  men  as  Leonidas,  Menelaus, 
and  Lycurgus,  has  overshadowed  the  prowess  of  many 
no  less  noteworthy  individuals  among  its  fair  sex,  for  it 
produced  Cynisca,  the  first  woman  who  bred  horses,  and 


f8  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

the  first  one  to  win  the  chariot  race  at  Olympia ;  there  was 
also  Euryleonis,  another  woman  winner  with  horses  at 
that  Mecca  of  skilled  strength.  When  such  mothers  made 
men,  it  is  not  to  be  marveled  at  that  they  made  prodi- 
gies of  valor.  And  many  of  their  sons  were  endowed  with 
bright  brains  no  less  than  with  muscle;  what  the  Law 
owes  to  Lycurgus,  the  statuaries  owe  to  Theodorus,  a 
male  resident  of  Sparta  who  discovered  the  art  of  fusing 
and  how  to  make  statues  of  metal. 

In  one  of  its  suburbs  there  was  preserved  for  nearly  a 
thousand  years  the  house  of  Menelaus ;  and  another  sub- 
urb contained  the  house  of  Phormio,  preserved  as  a  lesson 
to  inhospitable  people;  the  story  as  told  of  it  was  that 
Castor  and  Pollux  having  asked  permission  to  occupy 
one  of  Phormio's  rooms  over  night  were  told  to  go 
somewhere  else  as  the  room  was  that  of  his  daughter. 
The  next  morning  his  daughter  and  all  of  her  attend- 
ants had  disappeared,  and  the  room  contained  only  some 
statues  of  the  indignant  twins  and  a  strong  odor  of 
asafoetida. 

In  another  suburb  there  was  preserved  the  starting 
place,  and  the  road  over  which  Odysseus  ran  the  race  in 
which  he  won  the  faithful  Penelope  from  the  other  suitors 
in  that  peculiar  courtship. 

In  the  Spartan  temple  of  Phoebe,  there  was  suspended 
from  the  roof,  by  fillets,  the  most  wonderful  egg  that  ever 
was  laid,  the  egg  laid  by  Leda:  its  unknown  and  mysteri- 
ous contents  affording  contemplative  visitors  more  stores 
of  food  for  reflection  than  the  nose  of  Cleopatra;  one 
might  wonder  if  it  were  the  unhatched  twin  of  Helen,  and 
if  it  once,  or  maybe  still,  contained  as  many  miseries  as 
the  latter  mothered. 

The  Spartan  temple  to  Apollo  was  built  to  propitiate 
him  for  the  liberty  that  was  taken  in  cutting  down  his 


LACONIA  79 

grove  of  cornel  trees  on  Mt,  Ida  for  boards  to  make  the 
Wooden  Horse  thac  brought  about  over  night  the  capture 
of  Troy  that  ten  years  of  fighting  had  failed  to  effect. 

Sparta,  which  was  also  called  Lacedasmon,  was  the 
capital  of  Laconia  and  the  chief  city  of  the  Peloponnesus. 
It  resembled  Rome  in  being  built  on  and  about  a  number 
of  hills;  and,  like  Rome,  it  was  captured  by  Alaric,  in 
396  A.D.,  several  years  before  he  took  the  Holy  City. 

The  hills  of  Sparta's  site  are  found  at  the  upper  end  of 
the  valley  of  the  Eurotas  and  west  of  that  river,  where  it 
runs  along  the  western  side  of  Mt.  Tageytus,  now  S. 
Elias,  which  reached  its  greatest  height  of  7902  feet 
opposite  Sparta. 

The  city's  ruins  have  not  yet  been  sufficiently  un- 
covered to  determine  which  of  several  Springs  among 
them  is  the  one  that  was  called  the  Fountain  of  Dorcea. 

Pausanias;  III.  iS- 


66 
The  Envoys'  Well 

The  Envoys'  Well  at  Sparta  was  the  cause  of  a  succes- 
sion of  troubles  for  the  Lacedaemonians. 

When  Darius  contemplated  a  military  operation  in 
Greece  he  decided  to  feel  the  pulse  of  the  people  in  ad- 
vance in  order  to  find  out  where  he  would  meet  with 
opposition  and  where  no  resistance  would  be  made ;  this 
he  accomplished  by  sending  envoys  to  the  different  rulers 
to  demand  earth  and  water  as  a  token  of  their  submission. 

A  number  of  minor  districts  were  frightened  into 
acceding  to  the  demand,  but  Athens  and  Sparta  were  not 
to  be  coerced.  The  envoys  to  Athens  were  thrown  into 
the  Barathrum,  a  deep  pit  into  which  criminals  were 


^  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

tossed  when  sentenced  to  death.  At  Sparta  the  deputa- 
tion was  solemnly  conducted  to  the  Well  and  was  told 
that  it  was  welcome  to  all  the  earth  and  water  there  was 
in  it ;  and  then  without  further  ceremony  they  flung  all  of 
the  envoys  into  the  Well  and  left  them  to  drown. 

So  many  untoward  circumstances,  however,  followed 
this  violation  of  the  safe  conduct  universally  accorded  to 
envoys  that  the  Spartans  became  convinced  that  repara- 
tion must  be  made,  and  volunteers  were  called  for  to  go  to 
Persia  and  submit  themselves  for  execution  to  atone  for 
the  death  of  the  envoys. 

Two  citizens,  Sperthies  and  Bulls,  men  of  distinguished 
birth  and  eminent  for  their  wealth,  answered  the  call  and 
were  sent  to  Xerxes  who  had  succeeded  Darius.  But 
when  they  were  taken  before  the  king  and  informed  him 
for  what  purpose  they  had  come,  he  refused  to  accept 
their  sacrifice,  and  sent  them  back  to  Sparta  with  the 
message  that  he  declined  to  do,  himself,  an  act  that  even 
the  Spartans  considered  reprehensible,  and  that  he  would 
not  by  killing  them  relieve  the  Lacedsemonians  from  guilt. 

Herodotus;  VII.  I33- 


67 

TiASSUS 

The  feast  that  the  Lacedaemonians  called  Copis  was 
celebrated  in  the  Temple  of  Artemis  (Corythallia)  near 
the  Fountain  of  Tiassus. 

The  Copis  was  a  peculiar  entertainment  for  which  they 
erected  tents  under  which  were  strewn  beds  of  leaves 
covered  with  carpets,  on  which  anyone,  native,  or  visit- 
ing stranger,  was  at  liberty  to  recline,  and  to  regale  him- 
self with  meats,  and  little  round  rolls  made  with  oil  and 


LACONIA  9t 

honey;  together  with  new-made  cheese,  and  sHces  of 
small  sucking  pig  with  beans,  and  black  puddings,  sweet- 
meats and  dried  figs. 

The  Spring  was  on  the  road  between  Sparta  and  Amy- 
clae  where  Castor  and  Pollux  lived.  The  legend  that 
Amyclas  perished  through  silence  has  formed  the  basis  of 
scores  of  modern  stories.  The  original  was  to  the  effect 
that  the  people  had  so  often  been  disturbed  by  false 
alarms  of  an  enemy's  approach  that  a  law  was  passed 
prohibiting  any  such  reports.  Afterwards,  when  the 
Spartan  King  Teleclus  actually  did  come  against  the 
city,  no  one  daring  to  break  the  law  and  shout  a  warning, 
he  met  with  no  opposition  and  the  city  fell  an  easy  prey 
to  his  assault. 

The  source  of  a  small  stream,  now  called  Magula,  that 
runs  a  little  south  of  Sparta's  site,  is  supposed  to  be  the 
Spring  that  supplied  the  sparkling  beverage  at  the  tem- 
perance feast  of  Copis. 

Athenasus;  IV.  i6. 

68 
Messeis 

The  Fountain  of  Messeis  was  at  Therapne  on  the 
banks  of  the  Eurotas  river. 

Just  above  the  Fountain  were  the  tombs  of  Menelaus 
and  Helen  under  the  roof  of  the  Temple  of  Menelaus  in 
which  offerings  were  made  by  men  who  desired  to  become 
brave,  and  by  women  who  wished  to  be  beautiful. 

History  gives  many  illustrations  of  the  valor  of  the 
Spartan  warriors;  and  a  striking  instance  is  recorded  of 
the  effect  of  supplications  for  beauty,  made  in  the  temple, 
in  the  case  of  the  wife  of  Ariston  a  king  of  Sparta  about 
560  B.C.     As  an  infant  she  was  the  ugliest  and  most  mis- 

6 


&y,  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

shapen  child  in  Therapne,  but,  being  carried  to  the  temple 
daily,  she  became  before  reaching  marriageable  age  the 
most  beautiful  woman  in  all  Sparta. 

Therapne  was  opposite  the  southeastern  end  of  Sparta, 
so  near  to  it  as  to  be  sometimes  referred  to  as  a  part  of  the 
city. 

Homer  mentions  another  Fountain  of  the  same  name 
which  Strabo  says  was  near  Larissa  in  Thessaly.  (See 
Polydeucea.) 

Herodotus;  VI.  6i. 
Pausanias;III.  30. 


69 

Polydeucea 

This  Fountain  and  the  Temple  Polydeuces  were  on  the 
right  of  the  road  from  Sparta  and  near  Therapne.  Some 
people  said  that  this  Spring  was  anciently  called  Messeis. 

Further  on,  by  the  road  to  Taygetus,  was  an  interesting 
place  called  Milltown  (Alesiae),  where  Myles  invented 
mills  and  first  ground  grain  efficiently,  perhaps  with  power 
from  the  very  stream  to  which  the  Spring  gave  rise. 

Pausanias;  III.  30. 


70 

Marius 

The  town  of  Marius  was  a  hundred  stadia  from  Geron- 
thras.  It  possessed  an  old  temple  common  to  all  the  gods 
and  around  it  there  was  a  grove  with  fountains. 

There  were  also  fountains  in  the  Temple  of  Artemis,  for 
Marius  rivaled  Belemina  in  its  water  supply  and  had 
indeed  an  abundance,  if  any  place  had. 

The  ruins  of  Marius  are  found  within  a  mile  and  a  half 


LACONIA  83' 

of  a  settlement  now  called  Mari,  and  the  place  continues 
to  be  characterized  by  the  abundance  of  its  fountains. 

Pausanias  ;  III.  aa. 


71 

Nymph^um 

In  the  town  of  Nymphaeum  there  was  a  cave  very  near 
the  sea,  and  in  the  cave  a  Spring  of  fresh  water. 

This  was  between  the  promontory  of  Malea  and  the 
town  of  Boeas  the  building  of  which  was  attributed  to 
.^neas  at  a  time  when  he  was  driven  into  the  bay  by 
storms,  during  his  flight  from  Troy  to  Italy. 

This  Spring  has  been  located  at  Santa  Marina  where 
there  is  a  grotto  from  which  there  issues  a  Spring  of  fresh 
water. 

Pausanias;  III.  33. 


72 

The  Water  of  the  Moon 

Near  Thalamae  there  was  a  roadside  temple  of  brass 
and  an  oracle  of  Ino  where  whatever  any  perplexed 
applicants  desired  to  know  was  made  manifest  to  them  in 
dreams. 

From  this  temple's  sacred  fount  there  flowed  fresh 
water  called  The  Water  of  the  Moon. 

Ino  was  born  the  daughter  of  Cadmus,  the  founder  of 
letters  and  literature,  but,  fleeing  from  her  bigamous  and 
crazy  husband,  Athamas,  she  threw  herself  into  the  sea 
and  was  changed  into  a  goddess  under  the  name  of 
Leucothea.  Her  oracle  in  Laconia,  so  far  away  from 
her    birthplace,    indicates    that    even    the    prophetess 


%a  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

with  a  fortune  in  her  name  found  her  greatest  honors 
abroad. 

Her  name  was  linked  with  another  place  in  Laconia 
where  a  small  but  very  deep  lake,  two  stadia  from  Epi- 
daurus  Limera,  was  called  The  Water  of  Ino;  it  was  only 
a  small  lake  but  it  went  very  deep  into  the  ground. 

At  the  festival  of  Ino  it  was  customary  to  throw  barley 
cakes  into  it,  the  throwers  considering  it  a  lucky  sign  if 
the  cakes  sank,  and  the  reverse  if  they  floated. 

It  is  now  described  as  a  deep  pool  of  fresh  water  lOO 
yards  long  and  30  broad,  surrounded  with  reeds  and  near 
the  sea,  not  far  from  Platza. 

Pausanias;  III.  26.     III.  23. 


73 

TiENARUM 

There  was  a  Fountain  at  Taenanmi,  a  town  that  de- 
rived its  name  from  one,  Tasnarus,  of  Sparta.  The  town 
occupied  the  southernmost  point  of  the  Peloponnesus,  a 
promontory  of  Laconia  now  called  Cape  Matapan. 

Besides  a  celebrated  Temple  of  Poseidon,  and  extensive 
marble  quarries,  the  people  could  point  to  that  fascinat- 
ing but  generally  invisible  creation — a  boundary  line, 
which,  in  their  case  was  one  of  more  than  usual  interest, 
it  being  the  line  that  divided  the  Upper  world  from  the 
Lower,  the  entrance  to  the  latter  being  through  the  mouth 
of  a  cave  in  the  town,  the  very  cave  through  which  Her- 
cules emerged  from  the  dominions  of  Pluto  when  he 
brought  back  with  him  the  three-headed  dog,  Cerberus, 
of  the  Infernal  regions. 

Pausanias  saw  the  cave  but  refused  to  believe  the 
legend,  first,  because  there  was  no  underground  passage 


LACONIA  85 

from  it;  and,  secondly,  because,  if  there  had  been  a  pas- 
sage, no  one  could  easily  believe  that  the  gods  had  an 
underground  dwelling  where  departed  souls  congregate. 

Christianity  was  crouching  for  its  coming  spring,  and 
although  the  army  of  mythological  deities  had  been 
strengthened  by  a  shadowy  reserve  of  "Unknown  Gods" 
the  ancient  and  decrepit  host  was  losing  its  vigor  and  its 
votaries  day  by  day. 

The  wonderful  property  of  the  town's  Spring  was, 
however,  less  gruesome  than  the  mouth  of  hell,  and  much 
more  entertaining  than  the  marble  quarries,  or  the 
temple;  but  whether  its  power  was  a  manifestation  of 
Crystallomancy,  or  was  due  to  the  reflection  of  mirages, 
may  never  be  known,  as  the  power  was  suddenly  lost  very 
long  ago,  and  there  is  nothing  left  to  investigate  but  an 
ordinary  every  day  Spring  with  nothing  to  distinguish  it 
from  any  other  Spring  of  the  commonplace  kind. 

The  fountain's  entertainment  was  apparently  on  the 
order  of  modern  picture  theater  representations,  as  who- 
ever looked  into  it  saw  views  of  harbors  and  of  ships. 

Unfortunately  this  peculiarity  was  stopped  for  all  time 
by  the  act  of  one  of  the  townsladies  who,  more  intent  on 
the  labors  of  the  laundry  than  solicitous  about  strange 
sights  or  the  sanitary  condition  of  the  Spring,  inadvert- 
ently filled  it  with  such  apparel  of  her  own  and  her  house- 
hold as  needed  the  customary  Monday  soaking. 

As  the  Spring's  power  had  long  been  only  legendary 
even  in  very  old  times,  the  tradition  may  have  originated 
in  someone's  laudable  desire  to  prevent  those  thoughtless 
practices  that  are  only  too  common  wherever  Springs  are 
found;  for  even  the  Virgin,  if  Mandeville  mistook  not, 
did  not  hesitate  to  do  light  laundry  work  at  any  con- 
venient Spring  that  she  encountered  in  her  journeyings, 
without   any  apparent  thought  of  what  use  the  next 


86  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

traveler  to  arrive  might  wish  to  make  of  the  contam- 
inated water. 

Cape  Matapan  is  the  most  southerly  point  in  Europe 
and  forms  one  side  of  Quail  Bay  whose  shores  are  the  last 
resting  place  of  the  quail  on  their  Autumn  passage  to 
Crete  and  Cyrene  and  its  Spring.     (No.  320.) 

The  old  city  has  dwindled  to  a  village  called  Kyparisso 
whose  cave  is  still  the  cul-de-sac  that  caused  the  doubts 
of  Pausanias. 

Pausanias;  III.  35. 


74 
Pluto's  Springs 

The  entrance  to  Pluto's  regions  that  is  afforded  by 
the  cave  at  Taenarum  permits  a  glance  at  Pluto's 
Springs. 

They  were  created  in  the  imagination  of  Pherecrates 
who,  in  commenting  upon  the  customs  in  the  early  times 
of  Saturn  when  freedom  was  universal  and  there  were  no 
slaves,  assumed  that  there  was  consequently  no  work  to 
be  done,  and  that  there  was  no  necessity  for  planters,  or 
reapers,  or  craters,  or  carters. 

He  then  describes  Nature's  forces  as  performing  the 
operations  of  toilers  and  servants,  and  pictures  streams 
that  flowed  straight  down  from  Pluto's  Springs  and 
carried  relishes  for  every  guest.  Rivers  then  ran  down 
every  road,  though  half  choked  up  with  comfits,  rivers  of 
rich  brown  soup  that  bore  upon  their  seasoned  floods  hot 
rolls  and  cakes,  and  every  product  of  the  baking  art; 
while  Jove,  meantime,  rained  fragrant  wine,  as  though 
it  were  a  bath. 

And  the  trees  upon  the  hills  bore  hot  cooked  meats 


c  '  LACONIA  8^ 

instead  of  leaves ;  and  roasted  fish  and  fowls  and  game,  in 
place  of  blossoms. 

Atbenseus;  VI.  96. 


75 
Atalanta 

Cyphanta  in  Laconia  was  a  ruin  two  thousand  years 
ago.  There  was  nothing  left  of  it  but  a  little  temple  of 
iEsculapius,  with  a  stone  statue  of  the  god,  and  a  stream 
bubbling  out  from  a  rock  split  in  three — a  stream  of  soft 
water  which  was  the  Spring  of  Atalanta.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  Jasus  and  Clymene  of  Arcadia. 

Atalanta's  father,  who  had  desired  a  son,  cast  the 
infant  daughter  adrift  on  the  bleak  sides  of  Mt.  Parthen- 
ios;  but  some  kindly  hunters  found  her,  and,  reared 
among  them  in  the  forests,  she  grew  to  be  their  counter- 
part in  all  save  form. 

Knowing  nothing  of  the  ways  and  work  of  women,  she 
found  her  whole  pleasure  in  the  wild  life  of  the  chase  and 
in  the  adventures  of  Amazons.  She  became  one  of  the 
buccanneer  band  of  the  Argonauts,  and  was  the  only 
woman  admitted  to  the  desperate  enterprise  of  the  hunt 
of  the  Calydonian  boar. 

So  confident  was  she  in  her  fleetness,  and  so  averse  to 
the  duties  and  softnesses  of  others  of  her  sex,  that  she 
delighted  in  racing  the  would-be  wooers  her  wildness 
attracted — her  hand  against  their  lives  as  the  stake. 

She  was  never  outrun,  but  she  finally  lost  through  a 
trick. 

Stronger  than  Eve,  two  apples  were  not  sufficient  to 
gain  a  triumph  over  her,  and  Meilanion,  or  Hippomenes, 
was  obHged  to  delay  her  a  third  time  in  the  race,  to  pick 


88  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

up  the  golden  apples  of  Venus,  that  he  threw  forward,  in 
order  to  reach  the  goal  before  her. 

This  fleet-footed  Atalanta  is  not  always  recognized  in 
the  lumbering  lioness  so  often  seen  yoked  with  a  shame 
faced  monarch  of  the  forest  to  the  car  of  Cybele. 

The  lion  is  Hippomenes,  the  only  one  of  his  team 
mate's  suitors  who  succeeded  in  winning  a  race  with 
her,  and,  the  gods,  turning  them  into  draught  animals, 
fittingly  punished  them  for  disgracing  the  ideals  of  the 
running  track.  The  race  should  never  have  gone  on 
record  and  ought  to  have  been  protested  on  several 
grounds;  it  was  won  by  contemptible  jockeying,  and 
was  practically  thrown  for  gold  by  the  loser  who  was 
heard  to  say  before  the  start  that  she  hoped  she  would 
not  win. 

The  golden  apples  were  given  to  Hippomenes  by  Venus 
who  grew  them  in  her  garden  in  Cyprus;  indeed  Venus' 
part  in  the  scandal  was  the  most  detestable  of  all,  for, 
after  making  the  fraud  possible  and  depraving  the  poor 
dupes,  she  lost  her  temper  and  humiliatingly  had  them 
lionized  because,  forsooth,  she  was  not  given  enough 
credit  for  the  outcome. 

But  the  most  remarkable  feat  of  Atalanta's  life  is 
seldom  mentioned,  and  is  nearly  lost  in  a  couple  of  lines 
in  a  Grecian  guide  book  two  centuries  old,  which  speaks 
of  the  temple  first,  and  then,  in  half  a  dozen  words  and 
without  even  an  exclamation  point,  tells  of  the  origin  of 
the  Spring — a  wonder  birth,  at  the  like  of  which  all  the 
assembled  hosts  of  Israel  stood  aghast;  for  Atalanta  on 
one  of  her  long-continued  hunting  expeditions,  becoming 
very  thirsty,  struck  this  rock  of  Cyphanta  with  her  lance, 
and  the  dry  stone  burst  instantly,  in  sentient  sympathy 
with  her  craving,  and  became  the  basin  of  this  bubbling 
Spring. 


LACONIA  8f 

The  ancient  Baedeker's  direction  for  reaching  Cyphanta 
is  simplicity  itself,  and  though  very  short  is  longer  than 
his  description  of  the  place;  it  is:  "You  go  along  the 
coast  from  Zarax  about  six  stadia  and  then  turn  and 
strike  into  the  interior  of  the  country  for  about  ten  stadia 
— and  you  come  to  the  ruins." 

The  Fountain  has  been  located  at  Cyparissa  on  the 
eastern  coast  of  Laconia;  and,  rather  strangely,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Peloponnesus  at  Cyparissia  in  Messenia, 
and  on  nearly  the  same  parallel,  the  57th,  is  the  miracu- 
lous Spring  that  Dionysus  produced  by  striking  a  rock 
with  his  thyrsus.     (See  No.  82.) 

Pausanias,  III.  24. 

Ovld.     Metamorphoses;  X.     Fable  g. 

Apollodorus;  III.  9.     §3. 


76 

Belemina 

The  town  of  Belemina  had  fountains  in  abundance;  it 
was  in  fact  the  best  off  for  water  in  all  Laconia,  for  in 
addition  to  its  niunerous  Springs  the  King  of  Rivers,  as 
the  Eurotas  is  styled  in  its  modern  name  of  Basilipotamo, 
ran  through  the  city,  in  or  [near  which  it  made  one  of 
its  siiiigular  reappearances  after  its  underground  parting 
with  the  Alpheus  beyond  Asea. 

The  town  and  its  Springs  were  the  cause  of  frequent  con- 
tentions between  Laconia  and  Arcadia,  being  captured  and 
held  a  number  of  times,  first  by  one  and  then  by  the 
other. 

Some  ruins  on  the  mountains  now  called  Khelmos  are 
thought  to  be  those  of  Belemina. 

Pausanias;  III.  ai. 


^  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

77 
Fortunate  Springs 

Accepting  as  true,  for  the  nonce,  the  assertion  that 
such  as  have  had  uneventful  careers  may  be  said  to  have 
been  the  happiest  people,  there  may  be  grouped  under 
the  head  of  "Fortunate"  a  number  of  Springs  that  not 
only  had  no  history  of  their  own  but  that  flowed  in  places 
or  among  peoples  that  were  equally  fortunate,  peoples 
who  left  no  records  themselves,  and  of  whom  nothing  was 
recorded  by  others;  Springs  of  which  nothing  more  can 
be  said  than  simply.  They  Were,  or,  in  general,  more 
accurately.  They  Are. 

A  Fountain  that  is  tagged  with  a  tale  or  a  legend  may 
have  an  interest  added  to  its  normal  function,  but  the 
Spring  in  which  no  disconsolate  Fair  One  drowned  herself, 
or  that  arose  from  no  Sorrowing  Beauty's  tears,  may 
have  done  as  much  good  for  the  world  or  its  city  as  any 
well  lauded  and  widely  known  fountain;  and  as  such 
Springs  furnished  life-needed  drink  for  the  people  of  old, 
so  may  they  supply  food  for  random  reflections  to  the 
people  of  later  days. 

In  Nature's  great  scheme,  which  the  wisest  has  not  yet 
been  able  to  fathom,  it  is  impolitic  to  say  that  this  or 
that  is  useless.  It  would  be  equally  tyronic  to  affirm 
that  Alexander  the  Great  was  useless  merely  because 
there  is  apparently  no  condition  in  the  world  that  would 
not  have  been  as  good  as  it  is  to-day  if  Alexander  had 
never  existed.  If  the  chief  end  of  life  is  to  be  happy,  then 
Alexander  ruined  the  lives  of  most  of  the  peoples  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact.  If  the  principal  end  is  to  pre- 
pare for  a  future  existence,  then  he  lopped  off  the  lives  of 
a  multitude  before  their  preparations  had  been  completed. 

Alexanders,  however,  like  other  Anacondas,  seem  to  be 


LACONIA  ^f 

an  inseparable  concomitant  of  some  sorts  of  existence, 
and  although  no  one  has  yet  found  out  why  they  are  so, 
no  one  can  see  far  enough  ahead  or  behind  to  offer  any 
satisfactory  argument  why  they  should  not  be. 

An  humble  Egyptian  who  helped  to  build  the  pyramids 
and  did  honest  work  that  remains  long  after  shoddy  con- 
struction of  later  years  collapsed  or  was  condemned,  played 
a  valuable  part  in  the  world's  history,  and,  at  a  cursory 
glance,  is  as  useful  to-day  as  is  Alexander  the  Gone. 

Without  the  Egyptian  and  his  millions  of  fellaheen 
mates  the  pyramids  would  never  have  been  built,  for  there 
were  never  enough  architects  in  Egypt  to  have  leveled 
and  laid  the  stones  of  those  wonders  before  the  Dynasties 
interested  in  their  completion  had  died  out  and  given 
place  to  others  who  were  solely  or  much  more  concerned 
in  perpetuating  memories  of  their  own  particular  lines. 

It  might  be  said  that  the  pyramids  to-day  benefit 
nothing  but  a  tourist  agency,  and  a  car  line  that  would 
never  have  been  built  if  Cheops'  mind  had  run  to  some- 
thing other  than  architecture  to  preserve  his  name  or  his 
miunmy ;  to  which  the  rejoinder  might  be  made  that  they 
are  an  incentive  to  do  good  work,  and  that  good  work 
and  good  deeds  are  from  any  point  of  view  better  than 
work  and  deeds  that  are  bad. 

There  are,  no  doubt,  at  this  moment  blooming  in 
jungles  that  Man  never  sees,  as  beautiful  orchids  as  one 
can  find  in  the  finest  horticultural  gardens ;  and  nothing 
more  appreciative  than  a  cockatoo  or  a  monkey  ever  sees 
them;  though  in  the  scheme  of  Nature  they  probably 
have  some  use,  and  play  a  part,  if  it  be  only  to  enrich  the 
ground  at  their  death  and  so  keep  it  in  condition  to  be 
some  day  a  center  of  civilization  to  take  the  place  of 
another  center  that  shall  be  shifted  to  one  side  and  made 
uninhabitable  by  some  coming  convulsion  of  the  Earth. 


9^  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

And  those  placid  Springs,  with  nothing  but  a  name, 
without  which  the  cities  near  them  would  never  have 
been  founded;  those  Springs  that  furnished  the  pure  life- 
needed  liquid  that  enabled  the  citizens  to  grow,  even 
though  they  did  not  produce  great  works  or  do  great 
deeds,  are  no  less  to  be  respected  and  worthy  of  being 
mentioned  by  such  names  as  they  were  gratefully  given, 
than  the  founts  of  fulsome  fable. 

Such  Springs  served  a  purpose,  and  perhaps  they  are 
doing  so  still,  for  little  short  of  an  earthquake  can  stop 
the  flow  of  a  hardy  fountain.  Cutting  a  conduit  through 
a  country  or  a  city  sometimes  makes  a  Spring  a  "traveler" 
that  moves  its  mouth  in  protest,  or  makes  a  new  one 
somewhere  else,  if  it  is  not  as  nowadays  diverted  into  the 
conduit  itself. 

Even  an  earthquake  is  often  ineffective,  for  the  tears 
that  fall  from  the  head  of  a  mountain  are  not  stopped  by 
shaking  another  part  of  the  earth  a  hundred  miles  away, 
and  the  numerous  fresh-water  Springs  in  the  ocean  are 
probably  the  original  fountains  of  a  land  that  some  up- 
heaval of  Nature  in  one  place,  and  a  consequent  subsid- 
ence in  another,  cast  the  ocean  over  without  interfering 
with  their  ceaseless  activities,  which  continue  below  the 
sea's  surface  as  strenuously  as  they  did  when  they  were 
atop  of  terra  firma.  ,, 

The  names  and  locations  of  such  Fortunate  Springs  of 
Laconia  as  have  not  already  been  mentioned  will  be 
found  in  the  following  four  numbers : 


78 
Anonus 

Dereum  on  Mt.  Taygetus  had  a  statue  of  Derean 
Artemis,  and  near  it  a  Fountain  called  Anonus. 


LACONIA  9a 

79 
Gelaco 

This  fountain  was  near  the  town  of  Las,  and  was  so 
called  because  of  the  milky  color  of  its  water. 

Las,  the  founder  of  the  town,  was  killed  by  Pa- 
troclus. 

This  Fount  was  two  and  a  half  miles  from  the  sea,  and 
eight  from  Gythium.  It  is  near  a  village  called  Karvela 
and  its  little  stream  is  now  the  Turkovrysa. 


80 

Naia 

At  Teuthrone  there  was  a  fountain  named  Naia. 

Teuthrone  has  become  a  village  called  Kotrones;  it  is 
on  the  west  side  of  the  Laconian  gulf  and  nineteen  miles 
from  Cape  Matapan. 


81 
Geronthile 

Geronthrae  had  a  temple  and  grove  of  Ares,  and 
near  the  market  place  were  fountains  of  drinking 
water. 

Gheraki,  a  corruption  of  the  old  name,  is  the  present 
designation  of  the  town,  and  the  position  of  the  ancient 
market  place  is  plainly  pointed  out  by  a  number  of 
Springs  below  the  citadel. 

Pausanias;  III.  20.  (Anonus) 

Pausanias;  III.  24.  (Gelaco) 

Pausanias;  III.  25.  (Naia) 

Pausanias;  III.  22.  (Geronthrae) 


V-' 


MESSENIA 

82 
Dionysus'  Spring 

There  was  a  Spring  below  the  city  of  Cyparissiae  close 
to  the  sea.  It  was  called  the  Spring  of  Dionysus  because 
he  produced  it  by  striking  the  ground  with  his  thyrsus. 

One  might  siumise  that  the  thyrsus,  trimmed  with 
vine  leaves  and  crowned  with  a  pine  cone,  was  primitively 
a  traveling  larder,  a  stick  bound  with  bunches  of  grapes 
and  pine  cones;  a  larder  somewhat  rudely  imitated  in  a 
child's  loUypop  stick,  and  perfected  in  the  Mexican's 
cooked  tortilla  hat  which  provisions  him  for  an  extended 
journey. 

Grapes  and  cones  tied  to  a  stick  are  easily  transported 
by  one  who  has  no  pockets,  and  even  by  one  who  has,  for 
a  pocket  is  not  an  ideal  container  for  grapes. 

They  who  have  motored  and  dined  in  the  countries 
through  which  Dionysus  tramped  have  probably  en- 
joyed eating  pine  cones  without  ever  knowing  that  they 
have  tasted  them.  They  form  one  of  the  pleasantest 
ingredients  of  the  best  salads  that  are  served  along  Medi- 
terranean shores,  and  one  of  the  cones  is  an  ample  meal 
for  one  of  the  humble  classes. 

The  cone  has  at  the  base  of  each  little  scale  two  deli- 
cious white  cylindrical  nuts,  instead  of  the  soft  pulp  of 
the  artichoke  which  is  modeled  architecturally  much  on 
the  same  plan. 

The  scales  are  pulled  off  and  the  nuts  are  eaten  green 

94 


MESSENIA  c5S 

on  a  walk,  or,  if  leisure  serves,  the  cone  is  set  before  a 
fire  whose  heat  swells  the  scales  apart  and  warms  the  little 
nuts,  which  the  Italians  call  pinolas. 

If  Dionysus  had  had  the  foresight  to  use  a  hollow  cane 
instead  of  a  stick  for  his  thyrsus,  he  would  not  have  had 
to  emulate  Moses  to  moisten  his  meal  when  he  had 
finished  his  repast,  but  in  that  case  his  Spring  would  not 
have  been  heard  of  and  he  himself  might  have  come  down 
to  posterity  through  the  Messenian  patent  office  and  not 
through  Pausanias. 

This  Spring  is  in  the  modern  town  still  called  Cyparis- 
sia,  where,  on  its  southern  side,  a  fine  stream  gushes  out 
of  a  rock  and  flows  into  the  sea  close  at  hand. 

Pausanias;  IV.  36. 


83 

Clepsydra 

The  Spring  called  Clepsydra  had  its  source  on  Mt. 
Ithome  in  Messenia,  where  the  mountain  overhung  the 
town  of  Messene  and  made  a  commanding  site  for  its 
citadel. 

Its  water  was  used  daily  for  religious  purposes  in  the 
nearby  Temple  of  Zeus,  and  also  supplied  the  secular 
necessities  of  the  citizens,  being  carried  underground  into 
the  market  place  at  Messene,  through  a  conduit,  named  Ar- 
sinoe  after  the  daughter  of  Leucippus,  a  Messenian  prince. 

This  Spring  excites  particular  interest  from  the  fact 
that  the  Messenians  held  it  to  be  the  site  of  the  rearing- 
place  of  Zeus,  for  the  Pelasgian,  always  an  improving 
plagiarist,  whether  in  architecture,  art  or  literature, 
prefixed  a  chapter  to  the  Hebrew  history  of  the  World's 
creation,  which  gave  an  account  of  the  ancestry  and 


^  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

parentage  of  his  Jehovah,  the  Jove  of  the  Romans,  and 
the  Zeus  of  the  Greeks. 

According  to  this  account,  Cronus,  his  cannibalistic 
father,  who  had  a  predilection  for  eating  his  progeny,  was 
presented  with  a  stone  by  his  wife,  and  swallowed  it, 
thinking  he  was  eating  his  son,  who,  however,  had  been 
given  into  the  care  of  Ithome  and  Neda,  two  N5miphs  of 
Mt.  Ithome,  where,  at  this  Spring,  they  washed  and 
began  to  rear  the  great  Divinity. 

It  is  said  that  it  was  from  the  secret  removal  of  the 
infant  to  conceal  him  from  his  father  that  the  Spring  got 
its  name  which  comes  from  the  same  root  as  klepto- 
maniac, the  elegant  euphemism  that  is  applied  to  well- 
to-do  later-day  people  who  carry  off  something  without 
first  obtaining  the  owner's  consent. 

There  were  several  localities  that  claimed  the  honor  of 
being  the  birthplace  of  Zeus,  principly  Crete  and  Arcadia. 

Hesiod,  in  about  800  B.C.,  seems  to  have  accepted  Crete 
as  the  rearing-place  of  Zeus;  Cretan  and  fibbing,  however, 
had  long  been  synonymous;  and  the  islanders'  prepos- 
terous statement  that  Zeus  was  buried  in  Crete  did  not 
make  it  any  the  easier  to  credit  their  contention  about  the 
deity's  nativity. 

Callimachus,  of  about  250  B.C.,  names  Mt.  Lycasus  in 
Arcadia  as  the  birthplace,  and  says  the  god  was  taken 
thence  to  the  island  of  Crete  where  he  was  placed  in  a 
golden  cradle  and  brought  up  on  the  milk  of  the  goat 
Amalthea,  and  on  honey  especially  made  for  him  by  the 
bees  of  Mt.  Ida. 

The  poetess  Moero  adds  that  water  or  nectar  for  the 
infant  god  was  daily  brought  through  the  air  by  an  eagle 
that  drew  it  from  a  distant  fountain,  which,  if  it  was  the 
Messenian  Spring  Clepsydra,  might  throw  another  light 
on  the  origin  of  its  name. 


MESSENIA  97 

Two  ways  suggest  themselves,  by  either  of  which  one 
might  account  for  the  rival  roots  of  the  godly  genealogi- 
cal tree;  the  first,  by  supposing  them  to  have  grown  out 
of  a  similarity  of  names  in  different  places — a  nightmare 
that  often  carried  its  various  riders  in  different  directions 
even  while  they  dreamed  they  were  bound  for  the  same 
destination.  And,  in  fact,  such  similarities,  in  connection 
with  the  birth  of  Zeus,  are  found,  both  in  the  names  of 
people  and  of  places;  the  nurse-nymph  Neda  appears 
both  as  an  Arcadian  and  as  a  Messenian;  and  Crete  is 
found  as  a  district  in  Arcadia  far  away  from  the  island; 
while  Arcadia  is  not  only  a  country  in  the  Peloponnesus, 
but  also  a  city  in  Crete,  a  city  which  is  said  to  have  had 
numerous  Springs,  all  of  which  dried  up  when  the  city 
was,  very  anciently,  razed  to  the  ground.  That  town  was 
afterwards  rebuilt  in  the  southeastern  foothills  of  Mt. 
Ida,  and  the  Springs  reappeared  in  their  former  places. 

The  second  way,  in  accounting  for  the  roots,  is  by  con- 
ceiving that  they  sprouted  in  two  or  more  places  whose 
local  and  differing  traditions  persisted  even  after  all 
Greece-dominated  countries  had  accepted  a  national  re- 
ligion with  only  one  family  of  gods,  of  which  Zeus  was  the 
chief  and  mightiest. 

The  Greeks,  most  admirably  and  in  all  sincerity,  con- 
sidered their  Zeus  the  chief  god  of  the  universe;  and,  as 
they  became  acquainted  with  foreign  religions,  they 
simply  substituted  Zeus  for  whatever  the  barbarians 
ignorantly  called  their  own  chief  divinity.  Thus  in  the 
course  of  time  so  many  Zeuses  were  mentioned  that  Varro 
estimated  the  niunber  of  them  at  three  hundred,  many  of 
whom  no  doubt  had  individual  birth  traditions,  of  which 
the  most  persistent  were  those  of  the  original  chief  Cretan 
divinity  and  the  original  chief  Arcadian  divinity,  two  that 
may  have  been  kept  alive  either  through  intense  local 


98  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

pride,  or  by  writers  loath  to  leave  out  of  their  records  any 
fragment  of  ancient  lore;  records  made  before  Hesiod's 
time,  and  long  ago  lost. 

A  little  village  1375  feet  up  the  side  of  the  Messenian 
mountain  at  present  occupies  part  of  the  site  of  the  an- 
cient city  of  Messene.  It  is  named  after  the  Spring 
Clepsydra  which  the  people  today  call  Mavromati,  the 
Black  Spring,  whose  stream,  having  with  the  assistance 
of  an  earthquake  escaped  from  its  old-time  conduit,  now 
dances  in  joyous  freedom  through  the  village  street. 
Above  the  settlement  some  ruins  of  a  pillared  portico 
before  a  grotto  cut  in  the  mountain  rock  evidently  mark 
a  two-thousand-year-old  resting-place  that  was  made  for 
the  stream  on  its  run  from  the  source  to  the  city. 

Another  Spring  called  Clepsydra  was  at  Athens;  and 
Neda's  Spring  was  in  Arcadia. 

Pausanias;  IV.  33. 


84 

Pamisus 

The  sources  of  the  Pamisus  were  near  the  northern 
boundary  of  the  district,  and  the  river  in  its  course  to  the 
Gulf  of  Messenia  cut  the  country  into  two  nearly  equal 
parts,  coming  out  between  the  right  arm  and  thigh  of  the 
short-legged  and  headless  giant  that  is  sketched  by  the 
outline  of  the  Peloponnesus. 

Thus,  traversing  the  entire  extent  of  the  district,  it  was 
from  the  Messenian  point  of  view  a  worthy  and  im- 
pressive river,  navigable,  according  to  one  of  its  eulogists, 
for  a  distance  that  would  correspond,  on  the  Mississippi, 
to  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  miles. 

The  waters  of  the  Pamisus  were  clear  and  limpid,  and 


MESSENIA  99 

not  full  of  mud  as  the  other  rivers  were,  and  its  fish  were 
in  consequence  finer  in  appearance  and  more  palatable 
than  those  that  were  fed  in  other  streams  on  a  more  miry 
diet.  The  lands  along  its  course  were  unusually  fertile; 
and  the  annual  sacrifice  of  the  King  was  always  made  on 
its  banks.  Hence  the  whole  community,  the  King,  the 
farmer,  the  fisher,  and  even  the  fish,  found  reason  for 
pride  or  pleasure  in  the  Pamisus. 

Its  most  remarkable  virtue,  however,  was  a  certain 
limited  therapeutical  power  which  enabled  mothers  who 
had  any  young  Greek  gamin  with  a  disease  to  cure  him 
merely  by  dipping  him  in  the  river  water. 

Apparently  the  river's  healing  powers  were  not  exerted 
for  the  benefit  of  girls  or  for  a  male  beyond  that  stage 
when  he  is  sometimes  designated  with  no  particular 
degree  of  respect  as  "the  small  boy." 

Someone  may  smile  at  the  absurdity  of  the  idea  and  at 
the  credulity  of  people  who  could  have  such  a  belief ;  but 
there  are  many  parents  to-day  living  near  the  shore  haunts 
of  whales  who  do  not  lose  the  opportunity  when  one  of 
those  monsters  is  cast  ashore,  of  placing  their  young 
children  in  its  mouth,  in  the  firm  conviction  that  the 
children  will  absorb  some  of  the  whale's  strength  and 
longevity  while  in  contact  with  its  tissues. 

The  Pamisus  is  now  the  Dhipotamo,  the  Double  River. 

Pausanias;  IV.  31. 


85 

Phaile 

The  town  of  Pharas  lay  a  short  distance  to  the  east  of 
the  mouth  of  the  River  Pamisus,  and  six  stadia  from  the 
sea. 


lOO  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

It  had  a  grove  of  Carnean  Apollo  with  a  fountain  of 
water  in  it. 

The  town  of  Pharee  in  Achaia  had  a  Well  concerning 
which  more  information  is  given. 

The  Messenian  Pharae  occupied  the  site  of  the  present 
Kalamita,  the  modern  capital  of  the  country  and  the 
focus  of  the  revolution  that  spread  over  Greece  in  1 82 1 . 

Pausanias;  IV.  31. 


86 
The  Well  Achaia 

The  ruins  of  Dorium  and  the  Well  Achaia  were  beyond 
Polichne  and  the  river  Electra. 

It  was  there  that  Thamyris  was  stricken  with  blindness. 

The  district  of  Achaia  being  far  away  from  this  Well, 
it  is  not  clear  why  it  was  so  called ;  for  it  was  not  until  the 
time  of  Sulla  that  Greece  as  a  Roman  province  was 
known  as  Achaia, 

Perhaps  some  page  of  ancient  history  has  been  lost 
that  would  explain  why  the  Well  was  so  called,  and  why 
the  harbor  of  the  Messenian  seaport  town  of  Corone 
was  called  the  Port  of  the  Achasans ;  as  also  why  the  hill 
near  Samicum  on  the  coast  of  Elis  further  north  was  in 
very  ancient  times  called  the  Achaean  Rocks. 

And  the  cause  of  Thamyris'  blindness  is  a  companion 
mystery.  According  to  Homer  it  was  the  punishment  for 
his  effrontery  in  boasting  that  he  could  excel  the  Muses  in 
singing.  On  the  other  hand,  Prodicus  said  that  the 
penalty  was  not  exacted  until  Thamyris  reached  Hades. 

Still  another  authority,  whose  skepticism  frequently 
crops  out  when  relating  matters  of  general  belief  among 
his  contemporaries,  attributes  the  loss  of  the  boastful 


MESSENIA  lOi 

singer's  eyesight  to  the  same  cause  that  made  Homer 
blind — to  a  commonplace  disease. 

The  ruins  of  Dorium  are  supposed  to  be  biuied  some- 
where in  the  plain  now  called  Sulima. 

Pausanias;  IV.  33. 


87 
CECHALIA 

The  plain  of  Stenyclerus  lay  beyond  the  two  rivers 
Leucasia  and  Amphitus,  and  opposite  the  plain  was  a 
grove  of  cypress  trees,  called,  in  ancient  days,  CEchalia, 
but  in  later  times,  that  is,  some  two  thousand  years  ago. 
The  Carnasian  Grove. 

The  grove  contained  many  statues  and  one  of  them, 
representing  Demeter,  was  placed  near  a  welling  Spring 
of  water. 

Mysterious  rites  were  celebrated  around  the  Spring  in 
the  wood,  rites  that  were  only  second  in  sanctity  to  the 
mysteries  of  the  Eleusinians,  and  any  description  of  those 
rites  was  interdicted  no  less  strictly  than  in  Eleusis. 

The  river  Charadrus  flowed  along  one  side  of  the  Car- 
nasian Grove. 

Charadrus  was  a  common  name  in  Greece  for  a  moun- 
tain torrent,  and  the  site  of  CEchalia  was  not  agreed 
upon,  even  among  ancient  writers. 

Pausanias;  IV.  23. 


88 
Plataniston 

About  twenty  stadia  from  the  town  of  Corone,  which 
lay  under    the  mountain   Mathia,   there    was   one   of 


102  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

that  peculiar  class  of  Springs  that  has  a  tree  for  its 
home. 

Possibly  it  is  not  a  case  of  selection  on  the  part  of  the 
Spring  but  of  compulsion  by  the  tree  whose  roots  in  their 
powerful  boring  through  the  earth,  penetrate  an  under- 
ground current  and  open  up  a  new  outlet  that  pressure 
compels  it  to  use. 

In  this  instance  it  was  a  platanos,  a  plane  tree,  that 
gave  the  Spring  its  name,  and  that  housed  it  like  a  small 
cave,  broad  and  hollow. 

A  strong  stream  of  fresh  water  flowed  from  the  tree  and 
ran  all  the  way  to  Corone  which  was  a  modern  town 
before  History  began  to  reckon  from  the  Christian 
era,  and  grew  over  what  had  been  an  old  town  called 
JEpea,  among  the  ruins  of  which  the  builders  of  the 
new  one  dug  up  a  brass  crow,  for  which  their  word  was 
Corone. 

Corone  was  a  seaport  on  the  western  side  of  the  Mes- 
senian  Gulf  and  is  now  named  Petalidhi. 

Pausanias;  IV.  34. 


89 
MOTHONE 

Mothone,  at  the  extreme  south  west  point  of  Mes- 
senia,  was  a  very  old  town  which  was  known  as  Pedasus 
before  the  Trojan  war,  and  was  only  given  the  other 
name  after  that  event,  probably  to  honor  Mothone  the 
daughter  of  Diomede,  not  the  ferocious  Thracian  King 
who  fed  his  man-eating  horses  on  the  prisoners  he  cap- 
tured in  his  conflicts,  but  the  hero  who  next  to  Achilles 
was  the  most  illustrious  of  the  expeditionary  forces. 

Mothone  possessed  what  was  probably  a  valuable 


MESSENIA  103 

asset  in  a  peculiar  Well  that  contained  a  mixture  of  water 
and  pitch  that  resembled  Cyzicenian  ointment. 

The  town  also  had  a  temple  to  the  Goddess  of  the 
Winds;  it  was  erected  in  gratitude  to  Athena  who,  in 
answer  to  the  prayers  of  Diomede,  had  relieved  the  town 
of  a  constant  scourge  of  violent  and  unseasonable  winds 
that  frequently  blew  over  it  and  caused  great  damage. 
After  the  prayers  were  offered  no  trouble  from  wind  ever 
came  to  the  townspeople  thenceforward,  and  the  temple 
was  built  to  prove  to  the  goddess  how  deeply  they  appre- 
ciated her  kind  interference  in  their  behalf. 

Modon  is  the  modern  name  of  the  place,  but  search 
and  inquiry  for  the  peculiar  Well  have  proved  fruitless. 

Pausanias;  IV.  35. 


ELIS 
90 

PlERA 

The  District  of  Elis  was  the  cradle  of  Athletics.  There 
was  wrestling  in  the  plain  of  Olympia  before  there  was 
writing  at  the  foot  of  Parnassus,  for,  as  early  as  fifty 
years  after  the  Deluge  of  Deucalion  contests  were  held 
in  that  plain,  where,  between  Olympia  and  Elis,  the 
fountain  of  Piera  was  located. 

And  even  before  the  days  of  mankind,  the  gods  held 
contests  there,  Apollo  boxing  with  Ares,  and  racing  with 
Hermes;  and,  earlier  still,  it  was  the  scene  of  the  contest 
between  Zeus  and  Cronus. 

While  poets  of  all  recent  ages  have  glorified  the  Pierian 
Spring  of  Parnassus  and  trumpeted  in  numerous 
tongues  the  debt  they  supposedly  owed  it  for  inspiration, 
the  fountain  of  Piera  to  which  the  athletic  world  is  no 
less  indebted,  still  needs  a  minstrel  to  exalt  it. 

Even  Pindar,  the  poet  of  the  prize  ring  and  the  race- 
course and  all  the  departments  that  made  up  the  pen- 
tathlimi,  neglected  this  fountain  when  a  line  from  him 
would  have  given  it  as  prominent  a  place  in  the  world  of 
athletics  as  the  other  holds  in  the  realm  of  rythmic 
writing.  But  while  today  the  poorest  penny-a-liner  poet 
can  tell  the  taste  of  the  distant  Spring  in  Phocis,  blind- 
folded, perhaps  not  one  athlete  in  a  million  even  knows 
of  the  existence  of  the  sanctioning  Spring  of  Elis ! 

No  athletic  contest  could  take  place  without  it.    Time 

104 


ELIS  i6s 

is  told,  and  History  is  written  by  the  Olympiads,  but  no 
Olympiad  could  begin  until  the  waters  of  the  fountain  of 
Piera  had  given  the  requisite  permission,  a  sanction  more 
powerful  than  thatof  the  A.A.A.U.  of  today,  for  the  athletes 
of  the  whole  ancient  world  were  subject  at  Olympia  to 
the  authorization  that  no  ink  and  no  water  other  than  the 
water  of  this  fountain  made  valid.  *  moii  ?:;; 

Here  and  there  a  poet  may  compose  without  first  re- 
freshing himself  with  a  draft  from  the  Spring  of  the 
Muses,  but  not  even  the  most  unconventional  wrestler 
could  fake  a  part  of  a  round  until  this  fountain  had  per- 
formed its  law-assigned  function,  because  no  Olympian 
Umpire  was  qualified  to  act  until  after  the  sacrifice  of  a 
pig,  and  lustrations  of  water  from  the  fountain  of  Piera. 

In  the  nearby  temple  of  Ilithyia  it  was  a  custom  for  the 
venerable  Priestess  to  set  before  the  goddess  cakes 
kneaded  with  honey,  and  to  bring  lustral  water  to  her, 
and  perhaps  this  fountain  supplied  the  water  for  the 
goddess  as  well  as  for  the  Umpires  of  the  godless  athletes 
whose  fines  for  bribery  and  other  offenses  supplied  enough 
to  make  numbers  of  the  statues  that  were  displayed  in  the 
Olympian  temple. 

It  was  a  remarkable  incident  that  led  to  the  construc- 
tion of  the  temple  of  Ilithyia,  for  it  is  said  that  once  when 
the  Argives  invaded  Elis  a  woman  came  to  the  command- 
ing General  of  the  defense  with  a  baby  which  she  had 
been  apprized  in  a  dream  would  make  the  defenders 
victorious.  The  naked  baby  having  been  set  down  before 
the  army,  probably  while  they  discussed  what  warlike 
use  could  be  made  of  it,  it  suddenly  turned  into  a  dragon, 
which  so  frightened  the  invaders  that  they  fled,  and  being 
pursued  they  were  routed  without  difficulty.  As  the 
miracle  was  attributed  to  Ilythia  the  temple  was  con- 
structed to  commemorate  it,  and  the  prescribed  lustra- 


I06  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

tions  no  doubt  furnished  a  new  use  for  the  waters  of  the 
fountain  of  Piera. 

Oxylus,  the  three-eyed  King,  had  a  wife  called  Pieria, 
but  nothing  is  recorded  about  her,  and,  although  the 
names  are  nearly  alike,  it  is  not  probable  that  there  was 
any  connection  between  her  and  this  fountain,  for  Oxy- 
lus  from  the  humble  occupation  of  muleteer  stepped  in 
one  stride  to  the  throne. 

It  was  a  curious  illustration  of  the  wobbles  of  the  wheel 
of  fortune,  and  of  the  fondness  that  Good  Luck  has  for 
presenting  herself  disguised  temporarily  as  her  opposite, 
his  assumption  of  the  ermine  being  due  solely  to  his 
mule's  having  had  only  one  good  eye;  thus,  on  a  certain 
occasion,  while  the  people  were  trying  to  guess  the 
meaning  of  an  oracle  advising  them  to  make  a  man  with 
three  eyes  their  leader  in  a  contemplated  expedition, 
Oxylus  chanced  to  trudge  by  at  the  side  of  his  wall-eyed 
mule,  and,  in  a  flash,  one  of  the  sharp  wits,  Cresphontes, 
saw  the  answer  in  the  sightless  eye,  and  the  leader  of  a 
mule  became  the  leader  of  a  people,  and  their  King. 

It  may  have  been  Cresphontes  too,  who,  when,  on  the 
death  of  Oxylus'  son  another  oracle  commanded  that  the 
body  should  not  be  buried  either  in  or  out  of  the  city,  had 
the  grave  dug  across  the  boundary  line  by  the  gate  of  the 
road  to  Olympia  and  the  Spring. 

The  old  Olympic  field,  after  producing  athletes  of 
world  renown  for  many  ages,  has  in  modern  times  been 
used  to  raise  a  very  different  crop,  its  long  and  level 
expanse  of  plain  opposite  Lala  being  covered  with  corn- 
fields in  the  making  of  which  few  reminders  of  the  many 
and  magnificent  buildings  connected  with  the  classic 
athletic  grounds  have  been  allowed  to  remain  and  ob- 
struct the  plow,  or  rob  the  roots  of  room  and  nutriment. 

Pausaaias;  V.  4. 16. 


-';-T-,-:/-    ELIS     -^"^:^-  107 

91 
Pisa 

Pisa  was  a  fountain  in  the  territory  of  the  Pisatis,  a 
very  ancient  people  who  disappeared  after  Homer's  time. 

The  town  of  Pisa  was  founded  by  Pelops.  Some  of  its 
people,  or  their  successors,  went  to  Italy  and  founded 
the  Pisa  of  Etruria. 

The  name  of  the  fountain  signified  "potable, "  but  even 
ancient  writers  were  not  agreed  on  other  points  regarding 
Pisa;  some  said  it  had  been  a  city  which  took  its  name 
from  a  fountain;  while  others  held  that  there  had  been  no 
such  city,  but  only  the  fountain,  and  that  the  fountain 
was  the  one  called  Bisa  near  Cicysiimi. 

Denial  of  Pisa's  existence  is  accounted  for  by  its  having 
been  completely  destroyed  in  572  B.C.,  in  the  last  of  many 
conflicts  its  people  had  with  the  Eleians  over  the  presi- 
dency of  the  Olympic  Festivals,  an  office  that  no  doubt 
controlled  a  large  and  profitable  patronage. 

Pisa  is  supposed  to  have  occupied  the  land  along  the 
eastern  side  of  the  Olympia  athletic  grounds  by  the  rivu- 
let now  called  Miraka,  whose  source,  in  that  case,  is  the 
Spring  of  Pisa  that  caused  as  many  discussions  as  the  city 
caused  conflicts. 

Strabo;  VIII.  3.     S  3i. 


92 

Salmone 

The  fountain  of  Salmone  was  near  a  city  of  the  same 
name  which  belonged  to  the  old  Pisatis  and  was  founded 
by  King  Salmoneus  a  brother  of  Sisyphus,  and  the  son  of 
iEolus. 

Salmoneus  came  from  Thessaly,  and  he  attempted  to 
usurp  the  place  of  Zeus  among  his  subjects,  who  were 


«q3  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

commanded  to  make  their  sacrifices  to  him  instead  of  to 
the  god.  To  impress  them  with  his  mightiness  he  pro- 
duced thunder  and  lightning,  by  driving  about  in  a 
chariot  to  which  were  loosely  attached  numbers  of  re- 
sounding substances,  and  by  throwing  lighted  torches 
over  their  heads  from  time  to  time. 

In  the  end,  a  flash  of  real  lightning  destroyed  both  him 
and  his  city. 

The  king's  daughter  Tyro  became  enamored  with  the 
fountain  and  often  added  her  tears  to  its  waters  which 
were  the  source  of  the  river  Enipeus,  which  was  once 
called  Barnichius,  and  flowed  into  the  Alpheus  near  its 
mouth. 

There  were  many  reasons  for  Tyro's  tears  besides  the 
sacrilege  of  Salmoneus.  She  was  so  shamefully  ill-treated 
by  her  stepmother  Sidero  that  the  latter  was  eventually 
killed  by  Tyro's  son,  and  that  son,  Pelias,  came  to  a 
shocking  end  at  the  hands  of  his  own  daughters,  being 
cut  up  and  boiled  until  there  was  hardly  enough  of  him 
left  to  bury — a  result  that  no  one  deplored  more  than  the 
daughters,  who  had  followed  a  recipe  given  by  Medea, 
which  they  fully  believed  would  cause  their  father's  re- 
juvenation.    (See  No.  no.) 

The  stream  from  the  fountain  of  Salmone  was  ab- 
sorbed by  the  Alpheus  near  its  mouth  and  was  the  last 
river,  of  any  size,  of  the  many  that  the  Alpheus  greedily 
swallowed  during  its  journey  to  the  sea. 

Strabo;  VIII.  3     $32- 


93 
Cytherus 

The  district  of  Elis  had  a  score,  and  more,  of  rivers, 
some  of  which  rose  beyond  its  boundaries,  but  the  Springs 


ELIS  109 

of  many  of  them  were  indigenous  to  the  district,  and,  as 
leprosy  originated  in  Elis  and  made  its  home  there,  it  is 
easy  to  suppose  that  there  was  no  less  enterprise  in  turn- 
ing such  Springs  to  good  account  than  there  is  at  the 
Spas  of  modern  resorts. 

Something  to  cure  leprosy  would  have  been  in  the 
greatest  demand,  but  other  afflictions  would  also  have 
cried  out  for  relief,  and  for  these  the  Spring  of  C3^herus 
offered  a  general  balm.  It  was  apparently  a  source  of  the 
river  of  the  same  name,  and  belonged  to  the  village  of 
Heraclea  some  50  stadia  from  Olympia. 

It  was  presided  over  by  four  nymphs  called  the 
lonides;  they  were  Calliphasa,  Synallaxis,  Pegasa,  and 
lasis,  and  got  their  collective  name  from  Ion  the  son  of 
Gargettus  who  migrated  there  from  Athens. 

The  munber  of  the  nymphs  indicates  that  the  village 
did  a  thriving  business  in  sacrificial  fees  and  offerings  from 
the  patrons  of  the  Spring  which  was  held  to  be  a  univer- 
sal panacea,  so  that  people  bathing  in  its  waters  got  cured 
of  pains  and  aches  of  every  kind. 

Heraclea  is  assumed  to  have  been  where  the  modern 
village  of  Bnuna  is  located,  and  Strefi,  a  little  brook  of 
the  neighborhood,  is  supposed  to  have  been  called  the 
Cytherus  river. 

Pausanias;  VI.  22. 


94 

Letrini 

Letrini  was  i8o  stadia  from  Elis,  and  about  6  stadia 
beyond  it  there  was  a  perennial  lake  some  three  stadia 
in  diameter  which  was  fed  from  ever-flowing  Springs 
below  it. 


no  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

Letrini  was  once  a  small  town  but  in  Pausanias'  time 
there  were  only  a  few  buildings  of  it  left,  including 
a  temple  with  a  statue  of  Alphea  Artemis  who  was 
so  designated  because  Alpheus  was  for  a  time  deeply 
fascinated  with  her;  instead  of  resorting  to  flight, 
however,  and  crossing  the  sea  by  a  submarine  route 
as  Arethusa  did  when  she  was  the  object  of  the  affec- 
tions of  the  same  lover,  Artemis  adopted  a  less  stren- 
uous and  exhausting  expedient  to  rid  herself  of  his 
importunities;  thus,  divining  that  her  admirer  had  re- 
solved to  bring  his  solicitations  to  a  climax,  at  one  of 
the  nightly  revels  in  which  she  and  her  sportive  compan- 
ions indulged  near  Letrini,  she  merely  smeared  the  faces 
of  her  nymphs  and  herself  with  a  paste  of  earth  and 
water,  so  that  Alpheus  could  not  distinguish  one  mud- 
masked  beauty  from  another,  and  seeing  nothing  attrac- 
tive in  any  of  the  dirty  divinities,  he  departed  in  silence 
and  disgust. 

While  this  simple  way  of  checking  the  advances  of 
ardent  but  unwelcome  suitors  never  came  into  popular 
use,  it  is  said  that  a  modification  of  the  stratagem 
was  adopted  by  the  stanch  friends  of  the  nun  whose 
hair  a  spying  Prioress  cut  off  in  the  dark  for  purposes 
of  identification,  only  to  find  in  the  morning  that  every- 
one of  her  saintly  charges  had  discarded  her  crown  of 
beauty. 

As  this  perennial  lake  is  the  only  one  mentioned 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Artemis  incident,  it  was 
doubt lese  with  mud  from  its  margin  that  the  artful 
divinity  effected  the  disguise  of  herself  and  her  faithful 
companions. 

The  monastery  of  St.  John  near  the  foot  of  Katakolo 
is  thought  to  occupy  the  site  of  Letrini. 

Pausanias;  VI.  22. 


....i,d..'..     ELIS  III 

95 
Arene 

The  Spring  of  Arene  was  not  far  from  the  city  of 
Lepreus  that  got  its  name  from  the  misfortunes  of  its 
inhabitants,  who  were  the  first  lepers. 

According  to  tradition  the  Spring  received  its  name 
from  the  wife  of  Aphareus  who  seems  to  have  had  a  great 
fondness  for  her,  as  another  of  his  cities,  in  Messenia,  also 
bears  her  name.  Possibly  Arene  drowned  herself  in  this 
Spring  as  her  female  descendants  were  addicted  to  suicide. 
One  of  her  sons,  Lynceus,  might  easily  be  shown,  by  the 
favorite  way  of  interpreting  ancient  descriptions,  to  have 
been  the  first  discoverer  of  the  properties  of  the  X-ray, 
for  it  is  recorded  that  he  could  see  through  the  trunk  of  a 
tree.     (See  No.  322.) 

In  all  likelihood  this  Spring  located  the  pre-ancient 
town  called  Arene  whose  ruins,  very  near  the  river  Aniger, 
were  perhaps  once  a  part  of  the  city  of  Samictmi,  if 
indeed  Samicum  was  not  called  Arene  in  very  early  days, 
for  Homer  says: — "There  is  a  river  Minyeius  that  flows 
into  the  sea  near  to  Arene,"  and  it  is  known  that  the 
ancient  name  of  the  Aniger  was  Minyeius. 

The  name  of  this  river  recalls  an  old  version  of  the  fifth 
of  the  dozen  labors  of  Hercules  that  is  far  more  interest- 
ing than  the  current  account,  and  makes  it  more  like  a 
labor  than  the  cleansing  of  a  stable  seems  to  be,  and  more 
commensiu-ate  with  the  alleged  capacity  of  the  hero  for 
performing  gargantuan  feats.  According  to  that  old 
version  it  was  not  a  stable  but  a  whoje  district  that  was 
cleansed,  for  Augeus,  the  King  of  Elis,  had  such  immense 
herds  and  flocks  that  most  of  the  country  was  deeply 
buried  under  the  accimiulations  of  their  dung  and  could 
therefore  not  be  cultivated. 


112  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

The  depth  of  this  overlying  stratum  was  so  great,  and 
the  work  of  removing  it  was  considered  one  of  such  mag- 
nitude that  Hercules  is  said  to  have  secured  the  promise 
of  a  part  of  the  Kingdom  if  he  accomplished  the  labor, 
which  he  successfully  did  by  flooding  the  country  with 
the  waters  of  the  Minius. 

Possibly  it  was  because  the  Minius  is  only  a  small 
brook  that  the  large  river  Peneus  was  substituted  in  the 
later  version,  instead  of  accepting  the  Aniger,  under  its 
Homeric  name  of  Minyeius,  as  the  stream  that  was  utilized 
by  Hercules. 

Perhaps  also  the  incident  was  in  reality  only  on  a 
par  with  the  killing  of  the  Hydra  of  Lerna,  and  the  little 
brook  became  a  river  by  the  same  kind  of  creative  power 
that  made  the  mountain  out  of  a  molehill;  but,  to  con- 
tinue the  old  version,  when  the  present  method  of  clean- 
ing a  city,  which  is  only  an  adaptation  of  that  employed 
by  Hercules  to  cleanse  a  kingdom,  had  brought  the  long- 
hidden  surface  of  the  earth  to  view  again  and  restored  it 
to  cultivation,  Augeus  refused  to  pay  the  price,  on  the 
quibble  that  using  a  river  as  a  hose  was  novel  and  in- 
genious, but  was  not  work. 

Then,  as  if  that  refusal  by  itself  was  not  sufficiently 
provoking,  Eurystheus,  whose  primogeniture  had  em- 
powered him  to  harry  his  brother  Hercules  with  ten 
labors,  refused  to  count  the  cleaning  as  one  of  them,  and 
imposed  upon  him  an  additional  task  as  punishment  for 
trying  to  graft  by  inducing  the  King  to  pay  him  for  what 
he  knew  he  had  to  do  without  remuneration. 

The  repudiation,  on  the  part  of  the  King,  led  to  a 
bitter  war  during  which  Hercules  captured  and  sacked 
Elis,  and  stripped  the  country  of  young  men  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  women  of  the  land  prayed  to  Athena  to 
intermit  for  a  time  one  of  the  laws  of  generation.    Those 


'      ■'  '  '     ELIS      '.5...',..  11^ 

prayers  the  goddess  answered  with  so  much  satisfaction 
to  the  suppliants  that  they  called  their  Gretna  Green, 
and  the  river  that  flowed  through  it,  by  the  name  of 
Bady,  which  in  their  language  meant  sweet. 

The  modern  village  of  Strovitzi  is  near  the  Spring  of 
Arene. 

Pausanias;  V.  5.  6.  i. 


96 

Aniger 

The  Springs  of  the  ancient  Minyeius,  the  Aniger, 
which  were  in  the  mountain  Lapithus,  had  a  very  un- 
pleasant smell  that  could  be  distinguished  several  miles 
away. 

The  water  was  so  fetid  that  until  it  had  been  impreg- 
nated by  its  first  tributary,  the  Acidas,  which  was  an- 
ciently called  the  lardanus,  no  fish  would  swim  in  it,  and 
even  after  the  confluence  of  the  waters  such  fish  as  ven- 
tured from  the  Acidas  into  the  main  stream  became 
inedible. 

Among  the  natives  and  other  Greeks  there  were  various 
theories  concerning  the  cause  of  the  nuisance;  some 
averring  that  Chiron,  when  he  had  been  inadvertently 
wounded  by  Hercules'  arrow  tipped  with  the  poison  of 
the  Hydra,  fled  to  this  Spring  and  washed  his  sore  in  it. 

Others,  possibly  thinking  that  the  wisest  and  most  just 
of  the  Centaurs  would  never  have  desecrated  a  Spring 
in  that  manner,  called  Pylenor  the  culprit. 

Still  another  theory  was  that  Melampus,  the  son  of 
Amythaon,  when  curing  the  daughters  of  Proetus  threw 
the  purifications  into  this  Spring. 

Local  pride  and  dissimulation  may  have  had  nothing 


114  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

to  do  with  these  explanations,  but  a  thoughtful  tourist 
two  thousand  years  ago  might  have  wondered  why  the 
effects  of  such  very  ancient  incidents  had  not  worn  off 
during  the  lapse  of  time,  and  might  have  considered  that 
there  were  enough  contemporary  sores  afflicting  the  living 
lepers  of  the  state  to  contaminate  the  water  and  give  it 
an  evil  flavor,  for  it  was  a  current  practice  of  the  lepers 
of  the  district  to  swim  in  the  Aniger  in  the  belief  that  its 
waters  were  a  cure  for  their  endemical  disease. 

Even  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  this  pernicious  practice 
was  followed,  and  there  was  a  cave  at  Samicum,  called 
the  Cave  of  the  Nymphs  of  the  Aniger,  and  a  Spring 
called  the  Fountain  of  the  Anigriades,  where  such  as 
suffered  from  either  the  Black  or  the  White  leprosy  had 
only  to  enter  the  cave  and  pray  to  the  nymphs  and,  not 
forgetting  to  promise  to  sacrifice  to  them,  wipe  the  dis- 
eased parts  clean,  and  afterwards  swim  across  the  river; 
when  they  reached  the  other  side  they  were  well  and  their 
skin  was  uniformly  clear. 

Pausanias  was  of  the  opinion  that  the  taint  of  the  water 
was  due  to  some  ingredient  of  the  soil,  as  he  said  was  the 
case  with  those  rivers  "beyond  Ionia"  whose  exhalations 
were  lethal;  but  in  those  days  one  might  slander  to  his 
spleen's  content  anything  east  of  Asia  Minor  or  west  of 
Spain  for  those  parts  of  the  world  were  terrors  incognita 
to  everybody  who  lived  in  the  zone  that  lay  between 
them. 

Samicimi  is  midway  between  the  mouths  of  the  Alpheus 
and  the  Neda  rivers,  and  its  Cave  of  the  Nymphs,  the 
Anagriades,  fronts  on  a  lagoon  formed  by  the  Anigrus,  the 
Aniger  river,  so  that  to  reach  it  one  must  use  a  boat,  or 
swim  as  the  cure  seekers  of  old  did. 

There  are  numerous  Springs  in  the  deep  lagoon  whose 
exhalations  continue  to  taint  the  air  with  fetid  odors ;  and 


ELIS  115 

pure  yellow  sulphur  is  brought  out  by  the  waters  that 
seep  through  the  walls  of  the  cavern. 

Strabo;  VIII.  3.     §  19. 
Pausanias:  V.  6. 


97 
Cruni 

The  Spring  called  Cruni  was  between  the  river  Chalcis 
and  a  village  of  the  same  name  as  the  river. 

This  locality  seems  to  have  been  somewhere  between 
Samicum  and  Olympia. 

Strabo;  VIII.  3.     i  U- 


ACHAIA 

98 
Patile 

Patrae  was  80  stadia  from  the  river  Pirus.  It  was 
founded  by  an  Autochthon  who  received  from  Triptole- 
mus  the  first  corn,  and  it  was  then  named  Aroe  because 
its  soil  was  the  first  in  the  neighborhood  to  be  harrowed. 

The  women  at  Patrae  were  twice  as  numerous  as  the 
men  and  were  devoted  to  Aphrodite;  their  principal  occu- 
pation was  making  nets,  for  the  hair  and  for  dresses;  and 
the  theater  of  the  town  was  more  beautiful  than  any  in 
Greece  except  the  one  at  Athens. 

Aphrodite  had  a  sacred  enclosure  near  the  harbor  and 
a  wooden  statue,  the  fingers,  toes,  and  head  of  which 
were  of  stone. 

There  was  also  a  grove  near  the  sea  which  had  a  race- 
course and  was  a  most  salubrious  place  of  resort  in  stmi- 
mer  time.  In  this  grove  there  was  a  temple  to  Aphrodite, 
and  another  one  to  Demeter  in  front  of  which  was  a  Well 
with  a  stone  wall  on  the  side  of  the  temple  and  a  descent 
to  it  on  the  outside. 

Such  truth  was  there  in  the  water  that  it  was  an  un- 
erring oracle  in  cases  of  disease,  but  apparently  it  pos- 
sessed no  curative  power,  and  was  able  to  do  no  more  than 
predict  whether  a  sick  person  would  get  well  or  would 
succumb  to  the  malady. 

The  process  seems  to  have  been  of  the  nature  of  crystal 
gazing  and  was  carried  out  by  means  of  a  mirror  that  was 

T16 


ACHAIA  117 

let  down  into  the  Well  by  a  light  cord  and  delicately 
poised  so  that  the  rim  of  the  mirror  alone  should  touch 
the  water  without  being  covered  by  it.  Such  as  suc- 
ceeded in  performing  this  balancing  feat,  after  saying  a 
prayer  and  burning  some  incense,  had  only  to  look  into 
the  mirror  to  see  what  the  result  of  the  disease  would  be. 

They  had  a  chest  at  Patrae  that  had  been  made  by 
Vulcan,  the  same  one  that  Eurypylus  brought  from  Troy; 
a  relic  so  carefully  treasured  that  no  one  was  ever  ac- 
corded permission  to  see  it. 

Patras  still  retains  its  old  name  and  is  one  of  the  most 
important  towns  of  the  Peloponnesus,  being,  as  of  old,  a 
port  much  used  by  travelers  between  Italy  and  Greece. 

Like  all  long-inhabited  Greek  towns,  it  has  few  remains 
of  antiquity ;  but  it  still  preserves  the  ancient  Well  which 
is  under  a  vault  of  the  church  of  St.  Andrew,  the  patron 
saint  of  the  present  town. 

Pausanias;  VII.  21.     VII.  8. 


99 

Phar/E 

Pharae  was  150  stadia  from  Patras;  it  was  on  the  river 
Pierus,  and  had  a  remarkable  grove  of  plane  trees,  most 
of  them  hollow  from  old  age,  and  of  such  great  size  that 
one  could  eat  and  sleep  inside  of  them. 

The  water  at  Pharag  was  sacred  and  was  called  Hermes* 
Well,  and  the  god's  statue  and  his  oracle  were  in  the 
center  of  the  market  place. 

Instead  of  the  eye,  and  auto-suggestion  which  were 
relied  on  at  Patras,  the  ear  of  the  inquirer  was  the  oracle's 
medium  at  Pharas.  The  consultations  took  place  in  the 
evening;  on  a  stone  hearth  before  the  statue  frank- 


Ii8  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

incense  was  burned  and  then  oil  was  poured  into  lamps 
that  were  fastened  to  the  hearth  with  lead,  and  the  lamps 
were  lit.  A  brass  coin  was  deposited  on  the  altar  at  the 
right  of  the  statue,  and  the  inquirer  then  whispered  his 
question  into  its  ear  and,  stopping  up  his  own  ears, 
walked  out  of  the  market  place.  Then  he  uncovered  his 
ears,  and  whatever  he  first  heard  was  to  be  construed  as 
the  answer  he  sought. 

The  Hermes  statue  was  of  stone  and  square-shaped, 
and  near  it  were  thirty  square  stones  each  called  by  the 
name  of  one  of  the  gods,  and,  following  the  early-time 
custom  of  all  of  the  Greeks  when  they  paid  to  unhewn 
stones,  and  not  to  statues,  the  honors  due  unto  the  gods, 
the  townspeople  venerated  the  thirty  stones  very  highly. 

Remains  of  the  Achaian  Pharae  have  been  found  near 
the  village  of  Prevezo,  but  recent  explorers  do  not  men- 
tion the  Well.     (See  No.  105.) 

Pausanias;  VII.  33. 


100 

Well  of  Argyra 

Some  almost  untraceable  ruins  near  the  river  Charad- 
rus  were  all  that  was  left  of  the  town  of  Argyra. 

But  the  Spring  of  the  town  had  survived  and  was  on 
the  right  side  of  the  highroad  near  the  River  Selemnus. 

And  the  legend  of  the  two,  built  only  with  breath  but 
more  enduring  than  the  town  and  as  lasting  as  time,  was 
told  in  the  neighboring  villages  to  any  inquisitive  stranger. 

Argyra  was  a  sea  nymph  who  used  to  come  up  from 
the  sea  to  spend  every  spare  moment  in  the  company  of 
the  handsome  shepherd  Selemnus  and  pretend  to  help 
him  watch  his  feeding  flock. 


-  -       ACHAIA  119 

For  some  reason  and  very  suddenly,  the  shepherd  lost 
his  good  looks,  and  at  the  same  time  Argyra  lost  her  love, 
and  left  him. 

The  sad  spectacle  of  the  poor  lad,  ugly  and  dying  for 
love,  awakened  the  sympathy  of  Aphrodite  and  she 
turned  him  into  the  river,  and  not  only  granted  him  for- 
getfulness  of  the  inconstant  sea  nymph  but  made  the 
water  a  love  cure,  so  that  both  men  and  women  who 
bathed  in  it  were  troubled  no  more. 

Many  listeners  were  pleased  with  the  legend,  but  one 
of  them  was  inclined  to  think  that  if  it  had  been  true  the 
town  would  never  have  perished  but  would  have  become 
a  daily  Mecca  for  all  mankind,  as  the  water  of  Argyra, 
which  seems  to  have  been  the  source  of  the  river  Selem- 
nus,  would  have  been  more  sought  after  than  great 
wealth. 

The  Selemnus  flows  into  the  sea  west  of  the  point 
farthest  north  in  the  Peloponnesus,  now  Cape  Drepano, 
and  Argyra's  site  was  a  little  inland  from  the  river's 
mouth. 

Pausanias;  VII.  33. 


lOI 

Well  of  ^Egium 

On  the  seashore  at  JEgium  there  was  a  Well  that 
furnished  good  water  abundantly. 

It  was  surrounded  with  a  nimiber  of  temples  and 
statues  including  one  of  Zeus  the  Gatherer,  erected 
because  it  was  at  JEgi-um.  that  Agamemnon  gathered  the 
most  famous  men  in  Greece  to  deliberate  in  common  how 
best  to  attack  the  realm  of  Priam. 

It  was  the  people  of  this  town  who  first  made  cook- 


I20  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

shops  of  the  sacrificial  altars,  and  reduced  the  high  cost 
of  sacrificing  by  eating  the  fire-cooked  animal  victims. 

^gium  became  the  chief  city  of  Achaia  after  the  de- 
struction of  Helice  on  a  night  in  373  B.C.  when  an  earth- 
quake suddenly  opened  a  chasm  into  which  Helice 
dropped,  followed  by  the  sea  which  drowned  every  in- 
habitant and  hid  the  city  from  sight. 

The  meetings  of  the  Achaean  League  (of  twelve  cities) 
were  held  near  the  sea  in  the  same  grove  used  by  Aga- 
memnon when  planning  his  Trojan  campaign. 

^gium  under  its  modern  name  of  Vostitza  narrowly 
escaped  the  fate  of  Helice,  when,  on  the  23d  of  August, 
181 7,  two-thirds  of  the  city  were  destroyed  by  an  earth- 
quake accompanied  with  sounds  that  resembled  a  can- 
nonade. 

Vostitza  occupies  a  high  bluff  on  the  coast  east  of 
Cape  Drepano. 

Pausanias;  VII.  24. 


102 

Springs  of  the  Mys^um 

The  copius  Springs  of  the  Mysaeum  were  used  in  the 
peculiar  ceremonies  of  the  seven-day  festival  that  was 
held  in  the  Mysaeum  which  was  one  of  several  temples 
that  were  erected  by  Mysius,  an  Argive,  to  commemorate 
the  honor  that  Demeter  had  paid  him  by  accepting  the 
hospitality  of  his  house. 

This  one  of  the  temples  was  some  sixty  stadia  from 
Pellene,  and  its  Springs  were  in  a  grove  of  all  kinds  of 
trees  which  surrounded  the  building  in  which  the  festival 
was  celebrated,  some  of  the  mysteries  of  which  were 
concealed  even  from  a  part  of  the  devotees  themselves, 


ACHAIA  121 

for  on  the  third  of  the  seven  days  during  which  the  feast 
and  revels  were  prolonged  males  of  whatever  kind,  even 
dogs,  were  excluded,  and  the  women  passed  the  night  in 
mysterious  performances,  the  nature  of  which  the  men 
could  only  guess  at,  and  about  which,  when  the  men  re- 
sumed participation  in  the  rites  on  the  following  day,  there 
was  much  laughter  and  bantering  between  the  two  sexes. 
The  present  Trikkala  is  taken  to  be  the  place  where  the 
two  temples,  Mysceum  and  Cyros,  stood. 

Pausanias;  VII.  27.     VII.  23. 


103 

Cyros 

Near  the  Mysaeimi  there  was  a  temple  of  .^sculapius 
called  Cyros  where  cures  were  effected;  and  connected 
with  the  temple  there  were  a  number  of  fountains  whose 
waters  were  probably  utilized  in  some  of  the  many  ways 
adopted  by  the  ^sculapian  cult,  as  a  statue  of  the  god 
was  prominently  placed  at  the  side  of  the  largest  of  the 
fountains. 

All  the  differences  of  opinion  about  the  ancestry  of 
^sculapius  and  the  many  mothers  and  fathers  he  had, 
were  finally  swept  away  by  assuming  that  he  never  had 
any,  and  that  his  story  was  the  allegory  of  an  idea.  This 
idea  can  be  traced  back  to  Phoenicia,  but  after  a  time  it 
became  dormant  and  was  not  revived  again  until  the 
twentieth  century  when  it  was  introduced  as  something 
entirely  new. 

The  original  idea  was  that  -^sculapius  was  nothing 
more  than  the  typification  of  health — of  which  Fresh  Aii 
and  Sunlight  are  the  parents!     (See  No.  59.) 

Pausanias;  VII.  27.     VII.  23. 


122  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

104 
Sybaris 

This  fountain  was  in  the  town  of  Bura,  a  place  so 
suddenly  destroyed  by  the  earthquake  in  373  B.C.,  that 
all  of  the  inhabitants  perished,  as  related  of  its  neighbor 
Helice  in  connection  with  the  Well  of  ^gium. 

It  is  said  that  for  centuries  afterwards  those  who  sailed 
along  the  coast  when  the  water  was  smooth  could  discern 
the  ruins  of  the  wrecked  city  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea 
below  them. 

As  a  city  seldom  has  a  watery  grave,  there  is  an  un- 
canny coincidence  between  this  catastrophe  and  the 
burial  by  water,  137  years  earlier,  of  the  far-away  Magna 
Grascia  city  Sybaris,  that,  founded  by  people  from  Bura 
and  named  after  the  fountain  in  that  town,  was  over- 
whelmed with  the  waters  of  a  river,  as  related  under  The 
Fountain  of  Blood,  No.  211. 

Ovid;  Metamorphoses;  XV.     Fable  3. 
Strabo;VIII.7.     §5- 

DiRCE 

In  the  territory  of  Phara  in  Achaia  there  was  a  Foun- 
tain of  Dirce,  of  the  same  name  as  that  at  Thebes. 

This  is  the  same  place  as  Pharae  where  Hermes'  Well 
was  consulted  in  a  peculiar  way  by  such  as  wished  to 
know  about  future  events.    (See  No.  99.) 

Strabo;VIII.  7.     §5- 

io6 

Cymothe 

The  fountain  of  Cymothe  was  in  Achaia,  according  to 
Pliny,  but  he  makes  no  mention  of  its  whereabouts. 

Pliny;  Nat.  Hist.  IV.  6. 


ID 


SICYONIA 

107 
Dripping  Well 

The  town  of  Sicyon  had  a  Spring  near  the  gate,  the 
water  of  which  oozed  through  the  roof  of  a  cave  that  con- 
tained its  basin,  and  it  was  called  the  Dripping  Well. 

2089  B.C.  is  sometimes  given  as  the  starting-point  of 
Grecian  chronology,  and  the  year  of  the  founding  of 
Sicyon;  that  is  according  to  the  computations  of  Eusebius, 
but,  accepting  Herodotus  as  the  older  authority  and 
taking  his  time,  about  2100  B.C.,  as  the  period  when 
Thebes  was  laid  out,  Sicyon  may  well  be  assumed  to  have 
originated  years  before  thai,  for  the  small  and  select 
circle  known  as  Society  had  its  beginning  in  Sicyon  some 
time  after  the  dawn  of  Creation,  when  the  place  was 
called  Mecone  and  there  were  male  inhabitants  although 
woman  had,  as  yet,  never  been  heard  of;  for  in  the  Gre- 
cian order  of  development  numerous  goddesses  and 
thousands  of  naiads  and  nymphs  afforded  mortals  an 
extensive  circle  of  female  acquaintance  for  some  period 
before  Woman  was  eventually  created — created,  not  as 
a  help,  meet  for  Man,  but  to  make  him  miserable. 

The  incohesive  scheme  of  Grecian  creation  though 
very  crude  was  perhaps  an  improvement  on  still  older 
schemes  from  which  it  was  copied.  The  Egyptian 
parentage  of  the  plan  is  clearly  shown  in  the  resemblance 
between  one  persistent  and  repugnant  feature  that  is 
common  in  sketches  of  creation,  a  feature  that  originally 

123 


124  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

and  in  Egypt  quite  unobjectionable,  the  Grecians,  in  a 
measure,  modified. 

Though  they  were  content  to  tolerate  any  kind  of  con- 
duct among  their  gods,  their  creation  of  the  human  race 
was  so  arranged  that  marriages  were  made  between  such 
as  had  no  ties  of  kinship;  and  from  their  human  males 
and  females,  created  separately,  there  flowed  smoothly 
and  naturally  a  continuous  stream  of  genealogy  that  ran 
through  no  unlocated  land  peopled  with  a  race  that  was 
unaccounted  for  in  the  creative  scheme. 

That  beginning  of  Society,  its  first  and  greatest  event, 
was  the  "coming  out"  of  the  original  Woman — her  in- 
troduction to  the  world  outside  of  the  Court  of  Divinities 
in  which  she  had  been  designed  and  brought  to  perfection 
by  receiving  from  each  divinity  some  attribute  or  adorn- 
ment to  make  her  irresistibly  attractive;  for  this  First 
Lady  of  mythology  is  introduced  girdled  with  golden 
chains,  and  arrayed  and  perfumed  with  flowers,  and  not 
garbed  with  the  simple  and  ascetic  fig  leaf  in  which  Eve 
made  her  first  appearance  in  the  Terrestrial  Paradise. 

Felicitously  named  Pandora,  the  all-gifted,  she  soon 
became  the  wife  of  Epimetheus,  the  brother  of  Prome- 
theus in  punishment  for  whose  theft  of  fire  from  heaven 
she  had  been  made  to  bring  misery  on  the  human  race, 
on  the  somewhat  inconsiderate  system  that  makes  an 
innocent  someone  else  suffer  for  another's  wrong. 

Little  is  known  of  the  life  of  Epimetheus  after  his 
marriage.  Possibly  he  was  drowned  in  the  Grecian  flood 
that  occurred  in  the  time  of  his  daughter  Pyrrha  who, 
with  her  husband  Deucalion,  repeopled  the  inundated 
district,  by  throwing  behind  them  stones  that  became 
men  or  women,  according  to  the  sex  of  the  thrower. 

But  however  miserable  Epimetheus  may  have  been 
with  his  beautiful  mischief  of  a  wife,  his  brother  Prome- 


SICYONIA  125 

theus  must  often  have  wished  he  was  in  his  place,  for, 
though  finally  blessed  with  immortality,  he  was  for  many 
long  years  chained  to  a  rock,  and  furnished  countless 
meals  to  a  ravenous  bird  that  fed  on  his  liver  which  was 
every  night  freshly  renewed  for  the  bird's  next  breakfast. 
(See  No.  278.) 

Sicyon  was  two  miles  from  the  Corinthian  Gulf.  It 
was  called  Aegialea  at  the  same  period  in  which  it  was 
called  Mecone. 

There  are  some  ruins  of  its  temples  and  other  large 
buildings  which  are  now  surrounded  by  the  village  of 
Vasilika. 

The  Dripping  Well,  or  Dropping  Fountain,  which  was 
at  the  Corinthian  Gate,  has  disappeared;  its  producing 
rocks,  probably  broken  up  by  the  earthquake  that  de- 
stroyed the  town,  have  crumbled  to  pieces  and  no  longer 
act  as  a  reservoir. 

Pausanias;  II.  7. 
Apollodorus;  I.  7.     J  2. 


CORINTHIA 

io8 
Corinth 

In  Corinth  and  its  immediate  suburbs  there  came 
during  the  progress  of  its  civiHzation  to  be  many  foun- 
tains, the  works  of  man,  constructed  in  connection  with  a 
water  supply  through  an  aqueduct  from  Lake  Stym- 
phalus.    (See  No.  21.) 

Claiming,  as  Corinth  did,  to  be  the  birthplace  of 
Grecian  painting  and  a  center  of  artistic  impulses,  these 
fountains  represented  the  best  endeavors  of  the  artists 
to  produce  works  that  should  challenge  admiration  for 
beauty  of  form  and  decoration;  and  there  was  no  lack  of 
means  to  insure  perfection,  for  Homer  in  his  day  styled 
Corinth  wealthy,  and  an  individual  citizen  could  afford 
to  have  a  life-size  statue  made  of  pure  gold. 

And  no  doubt  wealth  was  still  plentiful  900  years  later 
when  Diogenes,  unable  to  find  honesty  at  home,  his  banker 
father  Icetas  having  been  convicted  of  swindling,  was 
still  making  his  search  for  it  at  a  very  advanced  age;  when 
ninety  years  old,  he  died  at  Corinth  in  323  B.C.,  and  his 
tomb  was  shown  near  the  gate.  The  city  also  had  the 
tomb  of  Lais,  whom  little  but  wealth  would  have  kept  in 
Corinth,  and  whose  last  monument  was  a  lioness  with  a 
ram  in  her  paws. 

Perhaps  it  may  not  be  amiss  in  this  connection  to  ask 
for  Diogenes  a  gentler  thought  than  his  discourtesy  to 
Kings  and  his  caustic  tongue  in  public  have  conveyed  to 

126 


CORINTHIA  127 

modern  minds;  for,  from  a  fragment  that  has  been  pre- 
served by  Athenasus  about  the  Hfe  of  Lais,  there  was  evi- 
dently an  attractive  backing  under  the  cynic's  veneer  of 
venom;  otherwise  Lais,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and 
perhaps  accomplished  women  of  her  time,  would  hardly 
have  fallen  in  love  with  Diogenes,  as  is  stated  in  that 
fragment. 

Lais  was  "discovered"  by  Apelles,  the  greatest  painter 
of  ancient  Greece  when,  as  a  little  girl,  she  was  drawing 
water  at  the  fountain  of  Peirene ;  and  it  is  greatly  to  be 
regretted  that  the  sketch  he  undoubtedly  at  once  made  of 
the  girl  and  the  fountain  some  350  years  before  Christ 
cannot  be  reproduced,  like  one  of  his  sayings  which  is 
still  heard  almost  daily,  for  words  are  more  enduring 
than  the  metals,  more  lasting  than  the  hardest  rocks. 
The  words  spoken  on  Mt.  Sinai  are  with  us  still,  but  the 
stone  tablets  that  accompanied  them  perished  long  ago. 

Even  the  first  four  words  ever  uttered  are  as  fresh  to- 
day as  when  light  broke  forth  at  their  command.  Of 
Apelles'  paintings  not  a  tint  is  left,  but  his  words  still  live 
in  the  proverb,  "Cobbler,  stick  to  your  last."  The  story 
about  it  is  that,  overhearing  a  cobbler  criticizing  a 
painted  shoe,  Apelles  immediately  corrected  the  shoe; 
but  when  the  next  day  the  cobbler  was  overheard  reflect- 
ing on  another  part  of  the  painting,  Apelles  furiously 
admonished  him,  "Ne  sutor  supra  crepidam." 

But  in  Corinth  there  were  apparently  few  of  Nature's 
fountains,  and  of  these  the  principal  two  Springs  were 
Peirene  and  Glauce  whose  legends  carry  back  beyond 
the  time  of  the  Trojan  war. 

One  of  them  was  a  factor  in  bringing  about  Sisyphus' 
ceaseless  labor  with  the  stone,  in  which  may  be  found  a 
lasting  lesson  to  discourage  misdirected  effort  and  futile 
work;  and  also  an  argtiment  against  bribery;  as  well  as 


128  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

an  early  and  sad  commentary  on  the  transitory  value  of 
slyness,  with  which  Sisyphus  was  considered  to  have  been 
endowed  in  a  greater  degree  than  any  other  man  of  his 
time. 

In  the  story  of  the  other  Spring  one  may  read  a  warn- 
ing against  marrying  in  haste,  and  a  substantial  reason 
for  the  frequent  inspection  of  water-going  vessels. 


109 

Peirene 

The  Spring  of  Peirene  holds  the  key  to  the  mystery  of 
the  laborious  task  that  was  assigned  to  Sisyphus  in  the 
lower  regions. 

The  incident  of  the  perverse  rock  that  unfailingly 
rolled  to  the  bottom  of  the  hill  as  soon  as  it  had  been 
painfully  pushed  to  the  top  is  familiar  to  all,  but  possibly 
few  recall  the  cause  of  the  punishment,  and  the  part  that 
Peirene  had  in  bringing  it  about, 

Sisyphus  was  the  founder  about  1350  B.C.  of  Greek 
Ephyra,  the  primitive  name  of  Corinth,  and  though  the 
place  he  selected  for  the  Citadel  was  without  a  Spring, 
he  was  perfectly  confident  that  he  could  induce  the  water- 
god  Asopus  to  remedy  this  defect  in  what  was  otherwise 
so  ideal  a  situation  for  a  fortress  that  modern  military 
authorities  have  called  the  hill  the  greatest  natural  citadel 
in  Europe. 

The  god's  daughter,  ^gina,  had  been  carried  off  to  an 
island  by  Zeus  in  the  form  of  an  eagle,  and  her  place  of 
concealment  had  been  discovered  by  Sisyphus  whose 
notoriety  for  slyness  was  so  great  that  some  of  the  writers 
after  Homer's  time  contended  that  only  he  could  have 
been  the  father  of  the  crafty  Ulysses.    Sisyphus,  there- 


CORINTHIA  129 

fore,  at  the  first  opportunity  offered  to  reveal  the  where- 
abouts of  ^gina  to  her  father  if  he  would  produce  a 
Spring  in  the  commanding  rock  selected  for  the  Citadel, 
and  Asopus,  only  too  glad  to  do  so  little  for  a  chance  to 
rescue  his  kidnaped  daughter,  immediately  provided 
this  Spring  of  Peirene.  ■ot 

Zeus,  however,  not  relishing  the  betrayal  of  his  private 
rendezvous,  ordered  Death  to  do  his  duty  at  once  and 
put  an  end  to  a  private  Department  of  Publicity  that 
would  probably  only  too  soon  have  been  overrun  with  a 
clientele  of  bereft  heads  of  families. 

But  Sisyphus,  easily  living  up  to  his  reputation  for 
craftiness,  managed  to  put  Death  in  fetters  and  to  keep 
him  from  plying  his  vocation  until,  after  quite  a  lapse  of 
time,  during  which  no  life  was  shortened  and  no  funeral 
was  seen.  Ares  succeeded  in  releasing  him. 

Sisyphus  was  then  taken  to  the  nether  world  where, 
after  once  making  a  temporary  escape,  he  was  set  to  work 
with  the  rock  to  atone  for  the  affront  to  Zeus,  and  for  a 
number  of  murders  he  was  alleged  to  have  committed 
among  innocent  travelers  he  had  attacked  while  in  his 
dominions. 

The  Spring,  however,  continued  unconfined  and  soon 
became  the  most  famous  in  the  city;  it  was  not  only  of 
extreme  brightness  and  purity,  but  was  also  sacred  to  the 
Muses. 

It  rose  below  a  small  temple  of  Venus  that  crowned  the 
nearly  two  thousand  feet  high  simimit  of  the  Acrocorin- 
thus,  and  its  overflow,  which  at  first  freely  irrigated  the 
side  of  the  hill,  was  conducted  through  conduits  into  the 
square  lower  down  where  it  was  received  in  a  marble 
reservoir  from  which  most  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  city 
at  one  time  drew  their  supply. 

This  Spring  might  have  babbled  "Corinth  is  I"  with 


13©  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

less  egotism  than  Louis  XIV.,  for  in  classical  literature, 
and  even  in  the  utterances  of  the  august  Delphic  Oracle, 
when  Corinth  was  referred  to  it  was  called  the  City  of 
Peirene. 

Pausanias  describes  both  the  upper  and  the  lower 
fountain,  and  gives  their  histories  as  he  gathered  them 
from  the  citizens  on  the  spot.  He  writes,  of  the  upper 
Spring; — "On  the  ascent  to  Acro-Corinthus  there  is  a 
temple  of  Aphrodite,  and  the  fountain  behind  the  temple 
is,  they  say,  the  gift  of  Asopus  to  Sisyphus,  for  he,  though 
he  knew  that  Zeus  had  carried  off  ^gina,  the  daughter  of 
Asopus,  refused  to  tell  him  unless  he  would  give  him  this 
water  on  Acro-Corinthus ;  and,  Asopus  giving  this  water, 
he  vouchsafed  the  required  information,  and  for  his  in- 
formation pays  the  penalty  in  Hades.  But  I  have  heard 
people  say  that  this  fountain  is  Peirene,  and  that  the 
water  in  the  city  flows  down  from  it." 

Of  the  lower  fountain,  Pausanias  says; — "Next  to  a 
brazen  statue  of  Hercules  is  the  approach  to  the  Well  of 
Peirene.  They  say  that  Peirene  became  a  Well  from  a 
woman  through  the  tears  she  shed  bewailing  the  death 
of  her  son  Cenchrias  at  the  hands  of  Artemis," 

Peirene  was  the  daughter  of  Asopus  and  Metope,  and 
Poseidon  was  the  father  of  her  son   Cenchrias  whose 
death,  having  been  accidentally  inflicted,  must  not  be 
dded  to  the  long  list  of  Artemis'  murders. 

Pausanias  continues; — 

"  The  Well  is  beautified  with  white  stone,  and  there  are 
cells  like  caves  to  match  from  which  the  water  trickles 
into  that  part  of  the  Well  which  is  in  the  open  air;  and  it 
has  a  sweet  taste,  and  they  say  that  Corinthian  brass 
when  hissing  hot  is  dipped  into  this  water." 

Peirene  having  been  gradually  but  steadily  covered 
by  the  rising  rubbish  of  centuries  was  unearthed  and 


CORINTHIA  131 

again  given  access  to  "the  open  air"  during  the  excava- 
tions begun  in  Corinth  in  1896  under  American  auspices. 
The  deposit  was  so  deep  that  a  ladder  had  to  be  used  to 
reach  down  into  the  upper  fountain. 

A  large  flight  of  steps  fifteen  feet  in  width  was  dis- 
covered descending  from  the  Temple  Hill  to  a  broad 
pavement  leading  to  the  ancient  Agora  or  Public  Square, 
and  to  the  lower  fountain  of  Peirene  which  adjoins  it  at  a 
lower  level  and  which  was  easily  and  indubitably  identi- 
fied by  inscriptions  and  by  the  correspondence  of  the 
surrounding  ruins  and  remains  with  the  structures  that 
Pausanias  saw  and  carefully  described  as  to  their  appear- 
ance and  locations  while  some  of  them  were  still  in  their 
prime. 

The  fountain  was  found  under  thirty-five  feet  of 
earth  and  had  a  limestone  front  of  two  stories  in  the 
Roman  style  which  had  taken  the  place  of  its  earlier 
form. 

The  style  of  some  of  the  architectural  remains  that 
were  discovered  nearby  indicated  that  much  of  the  work 
belonged  to  a  period  antedating  the  Christian  era  by 
some  six  hundred  years.  The  legend  of  the  Spring,  how- 
ever, goes  back  half  a  dozen  centuries  beyond  even  that 
archaic  time,  and  tells  that  its  waters  reflected  the  taming 
of  Pegasus,  an  undertaking  in  which  it  was  necessary  for 
Bellerophon  to  secure  the  aid  of  Athena  whose  work  on 
that  occasion  was  of  such  memorable  character  that  she 
received,  in  recognition  of  it,  the  epithet  Chalinitis,  The 
Bridler,  the  bridle  itself  having  been  made  of  gold. 

Its  sweet  water  was  extolled  by  Athenasus,  who  seems 
to  have  weighed  the  waters  of  all  the  Grecian  Springs,  as 
being  lighter  than  any  that  welled  from  the  nimierous 
clear  fountains  of  Greece ;  and  it  is  no  less  pellucid  today, 
so  clear,  in  fact,  that  at  the  first  view  a  visitor  often  steps 


132  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

into  it  before  realizing  that  the  ground  that  looks  so  dry 
is  the  bottom  of  the  Spring. 

Euripides  always  refers  reverentially  to  Peirene  as 
sacred;  and  his  Trojan  women  at  the  fall  of  Troy  seem  to 
see  some  assuagement  of  slavery  in  the  possible  prospect 
that  they  may  become  drawers  of  its  holy  water.  Also, 
he  mentions  the  graybeards  of  the  Corinthian  checker 
club — if  "pessoi"  was  really  the  origin  of  that  humble 
cousin  of  chess — as  playing  their  game  "near  Peirene's 
sacred  Spring."  They  played  possibly  on  the  pavement 
of  the  ancient  Public  Square,  by  the  two-storied  fountain, 
shaded  by  giant  plane  trees  like  the  lordly  specimen  that 
today  adorns  the  modern  Agora  and  shields  the  viewer 
of  a  glorious  panorama  of  azure  sea  in  the  Gulf  of  Corinth, 
and  the  undulating  land  of  half  a  dozen  Grecian  districts 
that  rise  over  the  hilltops  and  the  shoulders  of  Hehcon  to 
merge  with  the  sky  and  disappear  in  the  dazzling  crown 
of  crystal  snow  that  marks  the  monarch  height  of  Mt. 
Parnassus. 

The  plane  tree  has  grown  to  greatness  through  the 
efficacy  of  Peirene's  kindly  and  plenteous  waters,  waters 
so  plentiful  that  their  abundance  was  used  by  an  old 
Greek  comedy  writer  to  describe  the  marvelous  capacity 
of  the  Corinthian  music  girls,  one  of  whom  alone  could 
drink  up  the  fountain  of  Peirene,  if  it  were  flowing  with 
wine — an  exaggeration  perhaps  permissible  among  those 
who  used  the  "  Celebe,"  a  drinking  vessel  a  foot  high,  and 
one  of  which  was  found  during  the  excavations  about 
Peirene. 

"The  Miser"  of  Fielding,  and  "L'Avare"  of  Moli^re 
were  based  on  Plautus'  translation  of  this  comedy  for  the 
Roman  theatergoers  nearly  three  hundred  years  before 
Christ,  but  as  the  original,  of  which  no  copy  is  extant, 
was  composed  long  before  that  time,  Peirene  at  a  still 


CORINTHIA  133 

earlier  date  had  become  a  popular  prodigy  and  a  vaunted 
beauty  throughout  not  only  the  fountful  City  of  Corinth 
but  the  whole  land  of  Greece  itself. 

Pausanias;  II.  3-5. 

Athenaeus;  II.  18. 

Plautus;  Aulularia;  Act  III.  sc.  X. 


no 

Glauce 

The  Spring  of  Glauce  was  beyond  the  market  place  on 
the  road  leading  to  Sicyon,  near  a  temple  and  a  brass 
statue  of  Apollo,  and  below  the  Odeum  which  was  built 
above  it. 

Like  the  Spring  of  Peirene,  it  received  its  name  from 
the  similar  circumstance  of  a  woman's  throwing  herself 
into  its  waters,  though  not  from  maternal  grief,  but  in  a 
frenzied  effort  to  still  the  pangs  of  poison  cunningly  ad- 
ministered by  another  woman  with  a  craze  for  killing. 

One  might  trace  the  tragedy  back  through  a  record  of 
unstable  love  to  its  beginning  in  greed  and  the  consequent 
search  for  the  Golden  Fleece  by  Jason,  the  commander  of 
the  ship  ' '  Argo ' '  and  the  leader  of  the  marauding  expedi- 
tion of  fifty  choice  spirits  known  as  the  Argonauts,  which 
took  place  about  1250  B.C.  under  the  instigation  of  Jason's 
uncle  Pelias  of  lolcus  in  Thessaly. 

The  Fleece,  that  wealth  of  wool  which  had  been  the 
coat  of  Chrysomallus,  the  ram  that  was  Neptune's  and 
Theophane's  son,  was  found  by  Jason  at  Colchis  and  was 
secured  through  the  intervention  of  Medea,  King  Petes' 
daughter,  who  threw  the  Fleece's  guardian  dragon  into  a 
sorcerous  sleep. 

Medea,  infatuated,  returned  to  Corinth  with  Jason 
and  they  lived  together  for  ten  years,  at  the  end  of  which 


134  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

time  Jason  announced  that  he  intended  to  marry  Glauce, 
the  daughter  of  Creon  the  King  of  Corinth. 

Medea,  dissembling,  sent  a  robe  as  a  marriage  gift  to 
Glauce  who,  innocently  putting  it  on  in  her  eagerness  to 
view  herself  in  its  finery,  became  mortally  ill  and  rushing 
out  in  agony  plunged  into  the  copious  Spring  to  quench 
the  scorching  and  deadly  pains  that  the  poisoned  fabric 
of  the  present  immediately  produced. 

On  these  facts  alone,  Medea  would  no  doubt  receive 
the  sympathy  of  the  majority  of  modern  readers;  but  the 
deeds  of  one  age  can  rarely  be  justly  judged  by  the  stand- 
ards of  another  age.  People  of  the  past  are  best  tried  by 
the  laws  and  customs  of  their  own  periods,  for  even  an 
act  of  religious  duty  in  one  country  or  one  age  may  be 
considered  merely  murder  in  another  country  or  age,  and 
the  deed  can  only  be  considered  dispassionately  in  the 
light  of  the  guiding  principles  of  the  people  among  whom 
it  was  committed. 

At  Corinth  it  was  Glauce  with  whom  the  citizens  sided 
and  they  would  have  executed  Medea  if  she  had  not 
managed  to  elude  them  and  flee  to  Athens.  They,  how- 
ever, captured  a  number  of  her  children  of  whom  Jason 
was  not  the  father,  and  through  a  committee  of  women 
put  them  to  death  by  the  altar  and  buried  them  near  the 
Spring  where  the  haunting  ghost  of  the  murdered  Glauce 
might  continually  trouble  their  sleep. 

Indeed  it  was  perhaps  only  because  of  her  uncanny 
ability  to  effect  escapes  that  Medea  lived  long  enough  to 
gratify  her  mania  for  murders  by  adding  Glauce  to  the 
list  of  those  for  which  she  could  be  indicted;  she  killed; — 

Absyrtus,  her  younger  brother,  whom  she  cut  into  little 
pieces  which  she  threw  into  the  sea;  Perses,  an  elder 
brother;  Mermerus  and  Pheres,  her  two  sons  of  whom 
Jason  was  the  father;  Creon,  the  King  of  Corinth;  the 


CORINTHIA  135 

giant  Talus  at  Crete ;  and  Pelias  whom  she  murdered  in  a 
most  fiendish  way  through  his  own  daughters  by  induc- 
ing them  to  cut  him  up  and  boil  him,  she,  by  so  treating 
a  goat  and  then  dextrously  substituting  a  kid  in  its  place, 
having  deluded  them  into  believing  that  Pelias  too  could 
be  thus  restored  to  youth. 

Medea  afterwards  married  .^geus  a  sovereign  of 
Attica,  and  their  son,  Madus,  was  held  to  be  the  pro- 
genitor of  the  Medes. 

Jason  was  finally  the  victim  of,  possibly,  an  overlooked 
injury  sustained  by  the  Argo  when  she  was  carried  a 
twelve  days'  journey  overland  in  Libya;  or  when  her 
stern  was  nipped  by  the  Symplegades  or  swinging  rocks, 
at  the  entrance  into  the  Black  Sea,  which  came  together 
when  she  had  almost  completed  a  dash  between  them. 

Fortunately  for  all  later  navigators  these  wicked  rocks 
became  firmly  fixed  after  that  incident. 

Jason  having  had  the  vessel  drawn  up  on  the  shore  of 
the  Isthmus  as  a  montunent,  he  lay  down  on  the  sands 
under  its  shade  and  was  killed  by  the  stern  which  fell  off 
and  overwhelmed  him  before  he  could  make  his  escape. 
The  Spring,  concisely  located  in  ancient  descriptions  as  a 
short  distance  beyond  the  temple  and  bronze  statue  of 
Apollo  on  the  way  from  the  market  place  to  Sicyon,  was 
identified  by  the  excavators  before  mentioned  as  un- 
earthing Peirene,  who  found  it  about  one  hundred  and 
fifty  yards  from  the  west  end  of  the  temple,  its  basin 
made  out  of  a  cube  of  the  same  sort  of  stone  with  which 
that  building  had  been  constructed;  a  basin  that  prob- 
ably was  made  to  take  the  place  of  the  natural  pool  into 
which  poor  Glauce  plunged  in  her  frantic  efforts  to  re- 
lieve herself  of  the  pain  of  the  poison  that  permeated  the 
fatal  wedding  garment. 

Pausanias;  II.  3- 


1^6  GREECE;  PELOPONNESUS 

III 
Well  of  Lerna 

The  Well  of  Lerna  was  on  the  ascending  way  to  the 
Acro-Corinthus,  the  top  of  the  hill  above  the  city  of 
Corinth.  Apparently  it  was  lower  down  than  the  foun- 
tain of  Peirene,  but  above,  in  the  following  order,  the 
temple  of  Athena  the  Bridler;  the  theater;  a  wooden 
statue  of  a  naked  Hercules ;  a  temple  of  Jupiter  Capitoli- 
nus,  and  near  an  old  gymnasium.  The  Well  was  sur- 
rounded with  pillars,  and  there  were  seats  to  refresh 
those  who  made  the  ascent  in  summertime.  Seemingly 
the  pillars  supported  a  roof  that  shaded  those  who 
stopped  to  rest  on  the  way  up  the  hill,  and  to  slake  their 
thirst  and  enjoy  the  magnificent  view. 

It  is  not  stated  how  far  the  Well  was  from  the  statue 
of  Hercules  whose  name  is  closely  linked  with  Lerna  and 
its  Hydra,  nor  whether,  as  might  be  inferred,  the  Well  was 
an  outcropping  or  tapping  of  the  Spring  of  Peirene  higher 
up  on  the  hill. 

Pausanias;  II.  4. 


112 

The  Bath  of  Helen 

Opposite  the  Corinthian  seaport  town  of  Cenchreae 
there  was  a  warm  Spring  of  salty  water  that  flowed  copi- 
ously into  the  sea  from  a  rock,  and  its  temperature  is 
informingly  described  as  that  of  water  just  with  the 
chill  off.  This  Spring  was  called  the  Bath  of  Helen; 
but  what  part,  if  any,  its  delightfully  tempered  saline 
waters  had  in  contributing  to  or  enhancing  Helen's 
marvelous  beauty  is  not  disclosed,  as  was  done  in  the 
case  of  the  bathing  of  the  grateful  goddess  who  awarded 


CORINTHIA  137 

Helen  to  Paris  with  such  dire  after  effects.     (See  Nos. 
402-403.) 

This  Spring  is  now  found  about  a  mile  southwest  of 
Cenchreae  on  the  western  promontory  and  far  enough 
from  the  sea  to  admit  of  the  overflow's  being  used  for 
mill  purposes. 

Pausanias;  II.  2. 


MEGARIS 

113 
Fount  of  the  Sithnides 

A  part  of  the  water  supply  of  the  city  of  Megara  was 
derived  from  the  fount  of  the  Sithnides  which  was  near 
a  place  called  Rhun;  and  some  fragments  of  a  fountain's 
foundations  on  the  north  side  of  the  site  of  the  town  have 
led  to  the  conclusion  that  they  are  a  part  of  the  ancient 
Fount  of  the  Nymphs.  The  water  was  conveyed  to  the 
city  through  an  aqueduct  beautified  by  many  attractive 
columns. 

One  of  the  Sithnides  nymphs  was  the  mother  of  Me- 
garus,  one  of  Zeus'  sons  who  at  the  time  of  the  flood  of 
Deucalion  saved  himself  by  swimming  to  the  top  of  Mt. 
Geraneia  under  the  guidance  of  some  cranes. 

The  city  was  about  twenty-six  miles  from  Athens,  and 
near  it  were  the  rocks  where  Sciron,  the  highwayman, 
kicked  his  victims  into  the  sea  while  they  were  kneeling 
to  wash  his  feet,  an  act  that  he  required  them  to  perform. 
Theseus,  adopting  the  robber's  manner  of  procedure, 
destroyed  him;  and  the  rocks  were  said  to  be  his  dis- 
membered body  which  the  sea  refused  to  receive. 

The  municipal  Council  met  in  a  chamber  of  tombs 
wherein  the  bodies  of  heroes  were  deposited;  among  these 
may  have  been  the  remains  of  Hippolyta  the  Amazon,  the 
sister  of  Antiope,  who  fled  to  Megara  when  she  was  over- 
come by  Theseus,  and  passed  her  last  days  there  in  griev- 
ing over  her  defeat.     Iphigenia,  also,  is  said  to  have 

138 


MEGARIS  139 

passed  away  in  Megara,  though  that  may  be  considered 
a  disputed  point  as  some  claimed  that  she  died  in  Brauron 
while  others  said  that  she  never  died,  but  became  en- 
dowed with  immortality  and  eternal  youth. 

It  is  perhaps  an  instance  of  the  natural  rebound  of 
the  human  mind  that  among  a  people  who  legislated  in 
the  Halls  of  Death  there  was  produced  about  650  B.C.  the 
inventor  of  Comedy — if  the  claim  of  the  Megarans  is  to 
be  accepted  in  this  matter.  Susarion  was  the  inventive 
author's  name. 

The  aqueduct  was  built  about  630  B.C.  by  Theagnes, 
an  early  Bolshevik  who  arrayed  himself  against  the  rich 
and  espoused  the  cause  of  the  poorer  classes  by  whom  he 
was  installed  as  ruler  of  Megara.  The  wealthy  were 
banished,  their  property  was  confiscated,  and  the  public 
debts  were  repudiated.  Payment  of  rent  and  interest 
was  refused,  and  the  needy  helped  themselves  to  what- 
ever they  fancied.  Even  a  century  later  the  city  was 
still  in  a  Russia-like  condition  and  one  of  its  residents 
compared  it  to  a  ship  in  a  tempest  with  a  mutinous  crew 
usurping  command  and  plundering  the  stores. 

Megara  was  at  the  head  of  the  Saronic  gulf  and 
diagonally  opposite  the  storied  island  of  Salamis. 

Pausanias;  I.  40.     Theognis;  frag.  LXIII. 


CENTRAL  GREECE 

ATTICA 

114 

Athens 

In  a  year  about  2100  B.C.  when  Cadmus  was  starting 
the  town  of  Thebes,  Cecrops,  44  miles  eastward,  was 
planning  the  city  of  Athens  and  modestly  naming  it 
Cecropia;  although  the  traditions  of  envious  neighbors 
averred  that  Porphyrion  and  Actasus  and  Celaenus  were 
previous  kings  in  that  locality. 

That  a  place  is  the  Athens  of  its  district  is  putting  its 
praise  in  the  smallest  of  nutshells,  for  Athens  produced  or 
possessed  much  more  than  her  proportionate  quota  of 
Greece's  notable  works  and  people. 

Of  her  illustrious  sons,  men  who  have  never  been 
touched  by  a  shred  of  the  mythic  mists,  Solon  the  Solo- 
mon of  Greece;  Sophocles,  Miltiades,  Phidias,  Plato, 
Themistocles,  or  Aristotle  alone,  would  have  sufficed  to 
make  her  name  enduring.  And  a  pace  or  two  into  the 
mist  shows  that  Deucalion,  the  Grecian  Noah,  lived  in 
the  town;  and  that  Daedalus,  the  first  designer  of  wings, 
did  so  too  until  having  killed  Calus  he  fled  to  Crete,  as 
well  as  Musaeus  his  compeer  and  compatriot,  another 
aviator  of  such  skill,  incredible  as  it  may  seem  to  later- 
day  flyers,  that  he  died  of  old  age.  Callimachus,  another 
of  her  citizens,  anticipated  by  some  twenty  centuries  the 
crowning  glory  of  Edison's  light,  and  lit  the  Acropolis 

140 


ATTICA  141 

with  a  golden  lamp  that  used  a  wick  that  flame  could 
not  destroy. 

And,  competing  with  six  other  towns,  Athens  con- 
tended that  she  was  the  real  home  of  Homer,  who  was  on 
a  voyage  to  the  city  and  not  far  from  it  when  his  death 
occurred. 

After  a  twenty-five- hundred-year  journey  over  its 
elliptical  path,  the  long  train  of  Progress  was  lately  de- 
livering at  some  of  its  western  stations  batches  of  ideas 
so  long  forgotten  that  they  were  readily  accepted  as  fresh 
novelties  under  the  general  designation  of  Radical  Poli- 
tical Reforms;  they  included  several  different  styles  such 
as  The  Recall,  The  Review,  The  Referendum,  and  others. 
But  the  Recall  is  only  Ostracism,  which  originated  at 
Athens  and  was  delivered  in  a  much  attenuated  form; 
and  the  Review,  a  device  of  which  Athens  was  also  the 
author,  was  regularly  resorted  to  there  at  the  end  of 
officials'  terms;  and  later  it  was  greatly  improved  by 
making  even  the  heirs  liable  for  the  peculations  of  pilfer- 
ing politicians. 

Perhaps  Female  Suffrage,  too,  would  be  traceable  back 
to  Athens  but  for  the  disaster  it  brought  upon  the  city, 
as,  according  to  St.  Augustine,  it  was  the  female  vote  that 
lost  Neptune  his  case  vs.  Minerva. 

Neptune,  in  revenge,  flooded  the  country,  and,  in  order 
to  secure  relief  from  the  inundation,  which  it  was  held 
had  been  brought  about  by  the  females,  their  privilege 
of  voting  lapsed. 

Much  of  the  statuary  and  many  of  the  carvings  that 
adorned  her  world  wonders  of  buildings  have  for  years 
been  on  view  in  the  British  Museimi,  and  it  affords  a 
feast  for  reflection  that  when  Greece  became  wealthy 
again  through  the  Balkan  war  of  1913  Athens  should 
have  selected  an  Englishman  to  be  her  second  Peisistratus 


142  CENTRAL  GREECE 

and  revivify  that  still  worshiped  and  wonderful  Art 
that  had  so  long  lain  dormant  among  her  country's  ruins. 

At  the  outset,  Athena  and  Poseidon  were  rivals  for  the 
tutelaryship  of  Athens,  and  they  agreed  to  leave  the 
award  to  a  jury  of  the  gods,  the  decision  to  be  based  on 
the  relative  value  to  man  of  the  two  things  they  were  to 
produce. 

There  were  twelve  gods  in  this  first  jury,  and  to  the 
sanctified  inception  of  the  system  at  that  trial  one  might 
attribute  the  persistence  of  the  number  to  the  present 
day. 

Poseidon  produced  a  Well  of  water  which  in  ordinary 
case  should  have  secured  him  the  award;  but,  unfor- 
tunately, he  was  apparently  obsessed  by  his  own  pre- 
dilections for  the  sea,  and  tinctured  the  water  with  salt. 

Thus  Athena  who  produced  an  olive  tree  received  the 
decision. 

It  has,  indeed,  been  claimed  that  through  the  opening 
caused  by  the  trident  stroke  that  made  the  Well  there 
issued  the  first  horse  the  people  of  Cecrops  had  ever 
seen;  but  the  impressions  of  the  trident  points,  and  the 
fissure,  are  still  shown,  and  from  the  narrowness  of  the 
latter  it  is  apparent  that  the  horse  could  have  been  no 
bigger  than  the  sea  horses  the  Adriatic  still  produces,  and 
consequently  utterly  useless  save  as  a  curiosity. 

Poseidon,  however,  was  awarded  the  very  small  por- 
tion of  the  territory  that  bore  his  trident's  marks. 

Both  the  Well  and  the  tree  were  carefully  preserved  for 
a  score  of  centuries,  and  for  at  least  several  of  them  there 
were  people  who  protested  that  the  Athenian  water  was 
not  what  it  should  be.  It  seemed  to  take  its  taste  more  or 
less  mildly  from  Poseidon's  Well. 

When  someone  sang  of  the  pure  water  of  the  Eridanus 
that  was  quaffed  by  the  Athenian  virgins,  Callimachus 


ATTICA  143 

roared  in  rhyme  and  ridicule,  and  asserted  that  even  the 
herds  would  turn  away  from  it. 

Travelers,  too,  abused  the  water;  and  the  best  that 
could  be  said  of  it  seems  to  be  that  however  bad  it  might 
be  at  the  moment  there  had  been  a  time  when  it  was  good. 

Nevertheless  someone  might  have  aptly  retorted  on  the 
lines  a  President  followed  when  his  greatest  General  was 
accused  of  ebriety,  that  it  would  be  well  for  the  rest  of 
Greece  if  it  used  the  same  brand  of  water,  for  Athens  was 
not  only  the  most  popular  and  renowned  of  all  Grecian 
cities  but  also  the  most  populous,  having  at  one  time 
120,000  free  inhabitants  and  more  than  10,000  houses 
that,  notwithstanding  the  quality  of  the  water,  were 
readily  sold  at  any  price  from  $24  to  $2,400,  according  to 
the  character  of  the  dwelling. 

The  city  surrounded  the  Acropolis,  a  fiat-top  rock  150 
feet  high;  500  feet  wide  and  twice  as  long  from  east  to 
west.  In  the  beginning  the  city  was  on  the  rock  which 
was  also  the  stage  of  the  contest  between  the  two  deities 
and  where  the  Well  and  the  tree  were  produced.  But 
afterwards  the  rock  was  devoted  exclusively  to  the  site 
of  temples  and  statues. 

An  inclined  way  and  a  flight  of  marble  steps  seventy 
feet  broad  led  to  the  top  of  the  rock  on  the  west  where 
the  Propylaea,  having  an  imposing  fagade  168  feet  wide 
with  five  entrances,  gave  admission  to  the  Acropolis. 
The  cost  of  this  work  was  the  equivalent  of  two  and  a 
quarter  million  dollars. 

The  principal  temple  on  the  Acropolis  was  that  of 
Athena,  the  Hecatompedos  (the  temple  of  100  feet,  from 
its  breadth)  or  Parthenon  (the  Virgin's  house),  the  most 
perfect  production  of  Grecian  architecture.  It  was  66 
feet  high  and  built  entirely  of  Pentelic  marble. 

Within  it  and  upon  it  were  the  most  exquisite  pieces  of 


144  CENTRAL  GREECE 

sculpture;  some  made  by  Phidias  himself,  and  others 
executed  under  his  direction.  The  effect  of  their  faultless 
proportions  was  heightened  by  coloring,  and  the  mon- 
otony of  all-marble  groups  was  relieved  by  making  of 
metal  such  parts  as  bridles,  swords,  and  other  weapons. 

This  temple  was  in  a  fair  state  of  preservation  until 
Friday,  September  26,  1687,  when  it  was  wrecked  by  the 
besieging  Venetian  artillery  with  a  bomb  that  a  German 
lieutenant  had  the  dubious  honor  of  firing. 

Another  temple  was  the  Erechtheium  in  which  were 
Athena's  Olive  tree  and  Poseidon's  Well. 

Besides  these  magnificent  temples,  and  a  colossal  chrys- 
elephantine statue  of  Athena  with  ivory  face  and  flesh, 
and  garbed  in  a  golden  dress,  there  stood  on  the  rock  a 
bronze  statue  of  Athena.  This  gleaming  giantess,  seven 
times  as  tall  as  an  ordinary  woman,  was  visible  to  marin- 
ers far  out  on  the  distant  sea,  and  was  still  standing 
in  395  A.D.  when  its  size  and  dignity  so  awed  the  ruthless 
Alaric  that  he  was  afraid  to  climb  to  the  Acropolis. 

Within  a  mile  of  Athens  no  doubt  a  hundred  Springs 
broke  forth,  as  Timon  says;  but  the  city  does  not  seem  to 
have  had  a  due  proportion  of  them;  Pausanias  mentions 
two  Springs,  as  also  two  Wells  connected  with  temples  or 
shrines,  and  Aristophanes  alludes  to  a  third  Spring,  all 
five  of  which  sources  of  water  supply  have  been  written 
about  with  considerable  zeal  in  recent  years. 

Pausanias;  I.  2.  et  seq.  Shakespeare;  "Timon  of  Athens,"  Act  iv.,  a.  3. 


The  Erechtheium  Well 

This  was  the  Well  of  salty  water  ineffectually  produced 
by  Poseidon  when  he  struck  the  rock  with  his  trident  in 
competition  with  Athena. 


ATTICA  145 

The  Erechtheium  received  its  name  from  being  the 
place  of  sepulture  of  a  successor  of  Cecrops,  Erechtheus, 
the  inventor  of  the  four-horse  chariot,  a  device  that 
secured  him  the  position  he  still  holds  as  Auriga,  the 
charioteer  of  the  sky,  in  the  constellation  of  that 
name. 

According  to  Homer,  a  temple  existed  on  the  Acropolis 
before  the  birth  of  Erechtheus,  but  that  or  one  of  its 
successors  was  burned  by  the  Persians,  as  was  also 
Athena's  olive  tree  which,  however,  renewed  itself  in  a 
sprout  three  feet  long  two  days  after  the  fire,  and  was  still 
in  existence  in  the  1st  century  a.d.  The  last  temple  was 
probably  completed  about  393  B.C. 

When  the  wind  blew  strong  from  the  south  a  sound 
was  said  to  come  from  this  Well  that  resembled  the 
roaring  of  the  sea. 

In  the  vestibule  of  the  Erechtheium  there  was  an  altar 
to  Zeus  where  grain,  cakes  and  wine  were  offered  instead 
of  flesh ;  and  here  a  peculiar  custom  prevailed  that  seems 
to  have  been  a  sop  to  such  sacrificers  as  preferred  some 
excitement  for  their  fee,  for,  a  free  ox  having  been  per- 
mitted to  eat  of  the  grain  on  the  altar,  a  priest,  deftly 
throwing  an  axe  at  the  ox,  killed  him  and  then  ran  away. 
The  axe  was  immediately  arrested  and  put  on  trial  as  the 
•defendant  in  the  Court  called  the  Prytaneum  where  iron 
and  other  substances  were  tried  for  injuries  to  man  or 
beast.  Such  incidents  are  now  passed  over  with  a  casual 
reference  to  the  perversity  of  inanimate  objects,  but  even 
at  the  time  when  Cambyses  received  his  death  wound 
from  his  own  sword  while  leaping  upon  his  horse,  the 
matter  was  considered  as  a  personal  assault  and  the 
general  verdict  in  that  case  was  one  of  justifiable 
homicide. 

The  Athenian  axe  was  indicted  annually  and  always 


146  CENTRAL  GREECE 

acquitted,  but  under  an  English  law,  not  abolished  till 
during  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria,  a  chattel  that  caused 
the  accidental  death  of  a  person  was  always  considered 
guilty,  and  was  forfeited  to  the  crown. 

Under  the  Draconian  law  of  the  Athenians,  such  ob- 
jects were  banished,  being,  if  practicable,  thrown  into  the 
sea,  as  was  the  statue  of  Theagenes  that  fell  on  a  man 
and  killed  him  at  Thasos. 

Perhaps  many  of  the  playful  occurrences  of  today  will 
appear  as  serious  customs  in  the  far-away  future,  and  some 
historian  of  the  coming  race  may  chronicle  that  among 
the  tribes  of  the  ancient  days  of  the  20th  century  were 
the  English  who  worshiped  Justice  so  devoutly  that 
they  even  had  a  Court  in  which  they  tried  the  criminals 
of  their  story  books — as  indeed  Dickens'  Edwin  Drood 
was  publicly  tried  in  London  by  a  judge  and  jury  and 
counsel  of  noted  authors  in  1914. 

There  was  another  Athenian  court  called  the  Phreattys 
which  was  situated  on  the  shore  of  one  of  the  harbor 
towns  of  the  city,  the  Peiraeeus,  where  the  peculiar  prac- 
tice prevailed  of  having  the  defendants,  in  a  boat  on  the 
water,  address  the  judges  on  the  shore.  The  accused  in 
that  court  were  such  as  had  fled  from  justice,  and  appar- 
ently there  was  a  mild  principle  of  the  "third  degree" 
involved  in  thus  placing  them  where  their  minds  would 
be  likely  to  dwell  on  the  wrong  of  their  flight. 

Less  important  seats  of  Justice  are  told  of,  as  Froggy; 
and  Scarlet,  from  their  colors;  Triangle,  from  its  shape; 
and  Crush,  because  of  the  crowds  that  resorted  to  it  for 
the  settlement  of  very  trivial  disputes. 

The  Erechtheium  was  north  of  the  Parthenon  and  near 
the  edge  of  the  Acropolis ;  many  of  the  Athenian  temples 
became  churches  at  the  decline  of  the  pagan  religion  in 
the  6th  century,  and  then  mosques ;  but  the  fate  of  the 


ATTICA  147 

Erechtheium  was  to  be  turned  into  a  harem  for  a  Turkish 
bigamist. 

Pausanias;  I.  26. 
Herodotus;  III.  64. 


116 

Callirrhoe 

Two  rivers,  the  Ilyssus  and  the  Eridanus,  coming  from 
the  east,  joined  just  before  reaching  Athens,  and  then  as 
one  river,  the  Ilyssus,  passed  under  the  southeast  wall 
and  through  the  city  for  a  short  distance  and  then  flowed 
south  to  the  sea — when  its  bed  was  not  dry,  as  it  gen- 
erally is  after  rains. 

Just  within  the  walls  the  Ilyssus,  making  a  waterfall, 
passed  over  a  broad  ridge  of  rock  from  the  side  of  which 
flowed  the  Fountain  Callirrhoe  whose  water  was  distinct 
from  that  of  the  river.  About  510  B.C.  the  side  of  the 
rock  was  perforated  with  nine  holes  to  increase  the  flow 
of  water,  and  the  fountain  was  afterwards  called  En- 
neacrunus  or  Nine  Springs. 

It  was  through  this  Spring  that  the  Athenians  had  their 
first  walls  constructed  without  cost.  The  Pelasgians  who 
built  the  walls  received  in  payment  for  their  work  a 
barren  tract  near  the  town  which  they  converted  in  due 
course  into  productive  and  valuable  land.  Then  those 
Athenians  who  in  early  days  had  no  servants,  claimed 
that  the  wall  builders  ill  treated  their  daughters  when 
they  went  to  the  Spring  to  fetch  water,  and  on  that  score 
they  drove  away  the  Pelasgians,  and  took  back  the  land 
in  which  they  had  paid  them  for  their  masonry  work. 

Callirrhoe  was  the  only  source  of  good  drinking  water 
in  the  neighborhood,  and  other  parts  of  the  town  relied 
upon  wells  and  cisterns.     Of  the  latter  there  are  still 


148  CENTRAL  GREECE 

many  evidences  visible,  including  a  series  of  them  below 
the  Olympieium  so  large  that  they  were  said  to  have 
received  the  subsiding  waters  of  the  flood  of  Deucalion. 

The  Cerameicus,  a  wide  street  bordered  with  colonnades 
and  statues  and  containing  private  houses  and  the 
Odeium  or  Music  Hall,  was  the  principal  promenade  of 
the  city  and  led  from  the  fountain  in  the  southeast  to  the 
Dipylimi  Gate  in  the  northwest  section  of  the  walls. 
From  that  gate  the  thoroughfare  ran  to  Plato's  Acad- 
emy so  called  from  Academus  a  former  owner  of  the  prop- 
erty ;  it  was  hardly  a  mile  from  the  gate  and  was  laid  out 
with  paths  winding  through  groves  supplied  with  foun- 
tains. 

The  name  Akadhimia  is  still  attached  to  the  spot,  and 
near  it  is  the  grove  of  sacred  olives  derived  from  the  tree 
in  the  Erechtheium. 

Through  the  nine  holes,  Callirrhoe's  water  poured  into 
a  pool  from  which  a  canal  three  feet  square  cut  in  the 
solid  rock  carried  the  overflow  to  a  village  a  mile  away 
and  there  supplied  a  Well  and  a  wayside  fountain  and 
watered  many  gardens. 

Two  temples  were  built  above  the  Spring,  one  to 
Demeter,  and  the  other  to  her  daughter  Proserpine. 
In  one  of  these  there  was  a  statue  of  Triptolemus  as  the 
first  sower  of  grain,  Demeter  having  taught  him  the  art  of 
agriculture  in  gratitude  for  the  assistance  he  gave  her 
after  the  loss  of  her  daughter;  and  in  front  of  the  temple 
there  was  a  representation  of  Epimenides,  the  prototype 
of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  who  after  sleeping  for  forty  years 
made  use  of  his  headful  of  dreams  as  a  poet. 

It  may  be  supposed  that  it  was  not  long  after  Athens, 
when  it  was  Cecropia,  had  become  something  more  than 
a  small  village  that  the  increase  in  the  Athenian  thirst 
began  to  exceed  Callirrhoe's  capacity  to  assuage  it,  and 


ATTICA  149 

doubtless  water  was  then  brought  from  more  or  less  dis- 
tant Springs  in  the  surrounding  mountains,  as  the 
Emperor  Hadrian  on  a  grander  scale  brought  water  from 
one  of  the  chief  mountains  of  Attica,  Mt.  Lycabettus, 
through  an  aqueduct  that  he  had  constructed  about  117 
A.D.,  and  for  which  two  reservoirs  were  made,  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Fountain  of  Panopus,  which  yielded 
a  quality  of  water  that  neither  poets  nor  travelers  seem, 
during  a  long  period,  to  have  found  cause  to  complain 
about. 

Several  modern  writers  have  attempted  to  trace  a  con- 
nection between  the  water  of  Callirrhoe  and  the  water  of 
a  cistern  that  was  under  the  Olympieium,  the  temple  of 
Zeus  Olympius,  which  may  have  been  what  Pliny  calls 
the  Well  in  the  Garden  of  Jupiter,  and  what  Pausanias 
calls  a  cavity  into  which  the  waters  of  the  flood  of  Deu- 
calion drained. 

Pausanias;  I.  14. 


117 

Halirrhothius 

The  Spring  of  Halirrhothius  was  intimately  connected 
with  the  antithetical  sciences — Medicine,  always  trying 
to  lead  the  pageant  of  Progress;  and  Jurisprudence, 
lamely  lagging  behind  and  lazily  piecing  together  out-of- 
date  theories  and  principles  to  cover  practices  as  novel  in 
their  way  as  aerography  and  aviation  are  in  another  field. 

The  first  trial  for  murder  took  place  when  Halirrho- 
thius, the  lover  of  Alcippe  the  daughter  of  Ares,  was 
drowned  in  it  by  Ares.  The  trial  was  held  in  the  Areo- 
pagus; the  accuser  was  Neptune,  the  father  of  the  victim, 
and  Ares  was  acquitted. 


I50  CENTRAL  GREECE 

The  Spring  was  in  the  Esclepieium  or  Temple  of  ^scu- 
lapius  which  was  adorned  with  statues  of  the  members  of 
the  god's  family,  and  with  paintings,  and  which  contained 
a  museum-like  collection  of  relics  and  curios;  not  the 
least  interesting  of  which  was  a  coat  of  mail  made  by 
Sarmatians,  a  primitive  nomadic  people  who  used  bone 
points  for  tipping  their  weapons,  and  who  apparently 
were  the  inventors  of  the  lasso  which  they  employed  in 
conflicts  with  their  enemies  with  no  less  skill  than  the 
most  proficient  of  modern  cowboys.  The  coat  was  made 
of  mares'  hoofs,  cut  in  two  and  joined  together  with  the 
animals'  ligaments,  so  that  they  resembled  a  dragon's 
scales,  or,  if  the  reader  has  not  seen  a  dragon  (as  the  origi- 
nal describer  thoughtfully  adds)  the  bosses  of  pine  nuts. 

The  Spring's  waters  were  not  suitable  for  drinking  but 
were  used  in  rites  of  a  religious  nature,  and  especially  in 
the  ceremonies  required  of  Grecian  girls  about  to  marry. 

It  is  sometimes  puzzling  to  picture  the  relative  posi- 
tions of  the  features  Pausanias  describes,  as  he  had  an 
excursive  habit  of  springing  from  one  part  of  a  town  to 
another  and  describing  two  objects  far  apart  as  if  they 
adjoined  each  other,  in  the  same  way  that  he  leaps  from 
Greece  in  one  line  to  Africa  in  the  next,  and  in  the  third 
to  countries  of  One-Eyed,  or  Horse-Tailed,  or  other 
imaginary  men,  from  which  accounts  Polo  and  Mande- 
ville  could  by  skillful  grafting  have  produced  their  won- 
derful stocks  of  monstrosities.  But  he  was  quite  exact 
in  stating  the  position  of  this  Spring  and  that  of  Ennea- 
crunus,  after  saying  that  there  was  only  one  Spring  in 
Athens;  and  perhaps  from  that  remark  it  has  been  as- 
sumed by  some  that  they  had  one  source,  notwithstand- 
ing that  the  water  of  one  supplied  the  city  while  that  of 
the  other  was  undrinkable ! 

Pliny  says  that  substances  thrown  into  this  fountain 


ATTICA  151 

were  cast  up  in  a  fountain  at  Phalerum  which  is  similar 
to  the  connection  said  to  have  existed  between  Clepsydra 
and  the  harbor  of  Phalerum. 

Pausanias;  I.  21. 

Pliny.  Nat.  Hist.  II.  106. 


118 

9EMN.E 

This  was  a  fountain  of  dark  water  in  the  sanctuary  of 
the  Eumenides  commonly  called  the  Semnae,  The  Vener- 
able Goddesses. 

The  sanctuary  contained  also  a  monument  to  (Edipus. 

It  was  a  gloomy  recess  that  was  reached  through  a  wide 
chasm  in  the  rocks  at  the  southeast  angle  of  the  Hill  of 
Ares,  the  Areopagus.  The  hill  was  a  small,  rocky,  barren 
height  opposite  and  within  bowshot  of  the  western  end 
of  the  Acropolis. 

The  entrance  to  the  chasm  was  fifty  yards  from  a  flight 
of  sixteen  steps  that  led  up  to  the  bench  of  stone  on  which 
sat  the  Areopagites  the  Judges  of  the  Areopagus,  the  Mars' 
Hill  Court,  for  a  long  time  the  highest  judicial  tribunal 
of  Athens  and  the  sittings  of  which  were  held  in  the  open 
air  to  avoid  contamination  of  the  judges  by  the  presence 
of  the  criminal.  The  litigants  stood  on  two  white  stones, 
one  called  Rigor  of  the  law,  and  the  other,  Impudence. 

The  first  case  tried  in  the  Court  was  that  of  Poseidon 
vs.  Ares,  the  latter  being  charged  with  the  murder  of 
Halirrhothius,  and  the  twelve  gods,  to  whom  there  was  a 
moniunent  nearby,  were  the  judges. 

Subsequently  Orestes  was  prosecuted  in  this  court  for 
killing  his  mother  Clytemnestra,  the  accusers  being  the 
Semnae.  In  that  case  the  jury  was  divided,  the  result 
being,  not  a  mistrial,  but,  an  acquittal. 


.I$2  CENTRAL  GREECE 

The  failure  of  their  case  rendered  the  Semnas  furious 
and  they  threatened  to  vex  Athens  with  plagues  innumer- 
able. But  Athena  bribed  them  to  renounce  their  ven- 
geance by  promising  them  marriage  dues  and  birth 
offerings  from  the  people,  and  in  addition,  this  darksome 
cavern.  Afterwards  they  received  the  benefits  of  the 
sacrifices  that  those  who  were  acquitted  in  the  Areopagus 
Court  were  expected  to  make,  and  it  is  assumed  that 
(Edipus  was  the  first  contributor. 

It  has  been  stated  that  St.  Paul  was  put  on  trial  in  the 
Areopagus,  but  the  17th  chapter  of  the  Acts  does  not 
seem  to  imply  more  than  that  the  Apostle  stood  on  Mars' 
Hill  and  made  a  short  address  to  certain  philosophers 
about  idolatry  and  the  resurrection. 

The  fountain  was  near  the  cave  at  the  northwest  angle 
of  the  Acropolis  which  had  been  the  meeting  place  of 
Apollo  and  Creusa,  the  daughter  of  Erechtheus,  whose 
son  Ion  was  the  first  ancestor  of  the  lonians. 

Smith's  Die.  of  Greek  Geo.;     "Athens." 
.i^schylus;  Eumenides;  line  778.    In  683. 


119 

Clepsydra 

The  Fountain  of  Clepsydra  was  near  the  Cave  of 
Apollo  and  Pan,  a  grotto  in  the  Long  Rocks  on  the  north 
side  of  the  Acropolis. 

The  fountain  was  in  ancient  times  called  Empedo,  its 
later  name  being  given  because  it  was  supposed  to  have 
a  subterranean  communication  with  the  harbor  of 
Phalerum. 

The  only  access  to  this  fountain  was  from  an  enclosed 
platform,  on  the  Acropolis  above  it  at  the  north  of  the 


ATTICA  153 

northern  wing  of  the  Propylaea,  by  a  descent  of  47  steps 
cut  in  the  rock  and  partially  faced  with  marble. 

The  descent  was  arched  with  brick  and  opened  out  into 
a  small  subterranean  chapel  in  which  was  a  Well  sur- 
rounded with  a  peristomium  of  marble,  thirty  feet  below 
which  was  the  water.  The  Cave  and  the  steps  are  repre- 
sented on  a  coin  preserved  in  the  British  Museimi. 

The  water  of  this  Well,  which  was  also  unfit  for  drink- 
ing, was  carried  through  a  conduit  to  the  Clepsydra  or 
town  clock  of  Athens  located  in  the  center  of  the  Horolo- 
gium.  or  Temple  of  the  Winds,  an  octagonal  structure 
whose  eight  sides  faced  the  usual  Athenian  winds  and 
bore  figures  representing  them.  It  was  forty-four  feet  in 
height  and  was  surmounted  with  the  figure  of  a  Triton 
that  turned  on  a  pivot  and  indicated  with  a  wand  the 
direction  of  the  wind.  Sundial  gnomons  on  the  sunlit 
walls  indicated  the  time  of  day. 

Attached  to  the  south  side  of  the  building  was  a  turret 
that  contained  the  v/ater  that  was  the  mainspring  of  the 
Clepsydra. 

The  building  was  erected  about  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  Era  and  its  remains  are  still  visible  north  of  the 
Acropolis,  as  is  also  a  portion  of  the  conduit  which  in 
later  times  was  diverted  to  carry  water  to  a  mosque  for 
the  religious  ablutions  of  its  Turkish  congregation. 

Smith's  Die.  of  Greek  Geo.;  "Athens." 


120 

Pan  and  Apollo 

North  of  the  Acropolis,  which  was  called  at  different 
times  the  Rock,  of  Pallas,  of  Macrce,  of  Cecrops,  there 
were  several  caves,  which  Euripides  says  were  the  grottos 


154  CENTRAL  GREECE 

of  Pan.    One  of  them  became  associated  with  the  name 
of  Apollo  and  was  dedicated  to  him  as  a  shrine. 

Another  of  the  caves,  for  it  was  assumably  not  the  one 
consecrated  to  Apollo,  was  similarly  dedicated  to  Pan 
when  he  complained  that  the  Athenians  were  ignoring 
him.  This  complaint  was  made  to  Pheidippides  who 
established  a  record,  if  not  for  truth,  at  least  for  speed,  in 
running  the  first  race  over  the  original  Marathon  course 
in  490  B.C.,  to  announce  to  the  Athenians  that  the  Per- 
sians had  been  defeated  on  the  plain  of  Marathon.  He 
expired  as  he  gasped  out  the  welcome  news  at  the  end  of 
his  run  of  26  miles  and  385  yards,  having  no  doubt  over 
strained  himself  in  previously  running  from  Athens  to 
Sparta  in  twenty-four  hours,  to  solicit  Lacedasmonian 
assistance  on  the  same  battlefield — it  was  on  this  first 
run  that  Pan  intercepted  him  and  made  his  complaint. 

Pausanias  says  there  was  a  Well  near  these  caverns — 
a  Well  that  some  moderns  have  seemingly  taken  for  the 
Spring  called  Clepsydra;  but,  as  a  Well  is  not  usually 
adapted  for  use  as  a  bath,  Cinesias  would  not  have  been 
likely  to  recommend  his  frolicsome  wife  Myrrhina  to 
bathe  in  Clepsydra  had  Clepsydra  not  been  an  open 
Spring. 

The  recommendation  was  made  in  the  cave  of  Pan,  or 
just  before  Cinesias  and  his  wife  reached  it,  at  the  time  a 
momentous  movement  was  in  progress  among  the  women 
of  several  districts  of  Greece. 

This  movement  occurred  during  the  long  war  between 
Sparta  and  Athens  in  the  beginning  of  the  4th  century 
B.C.  when,  all  able-bodied  men  having  been  called  away 
from  their  homes  to  fight,  the  women  of  Athens,  under 
the  leadership  of  Lysistrata  the  wife  of  an  Athenian 
official,  decided  to  adopt  a  course  that  should  speedily 
bring  about  peace  and  restore  to  them  their  husbands 


ATTICA  155 

and  their  natural  home  life — the  same  course,  in  fact, 
that  some  of  the  Suffragettes  of  the  early  part  of  the 
20th  century  proposed  to  take,  and  that  might  have  been 
carried  into  effect  if,  after  even  the  bare  hint  of  it,  the 
different  State  legislatures  had  not  hastened  to  confirm 
the  XlXth  Amendment. 

The  beauties  of  various  districts  met  on  the  Acropolis 
at  the  call  of  Lysistrata  who  explained  her  plan,  and 
bound  them,  by  a  solemn  oath  taken  over  a  large  black 
cup  turned  upsidedown,  to  a  promise  that  whenever  any 
of  the  husbands  returned  home  on  furlough  they  would 
make  unusual  efforts  to  beautify  themselves  with  alkanet 
root,  cosmetics,  perfumes,  and  depilatories;  and  would 
bedeck  themselves  with  fine  linen,  saffron-dyed  robes, 
sandals,  and  transparent  Cimmerian  vests;  using  every 
expedient  to  appear  as  charming  and  attractive  as 
possible,  and  in  all  respects  comporting  themselves  to- 
wards their  spouses  as  in  the  days  of  courtship. 

How  the  details  of  this  scheme  were  individually 
worked  out  is  minutely  told  in  an  amusing  account  of  the 
way  in  which  Cinesias,  the  first  husband  to  return  on 
leave  of  absence,  was  received  by  Myrrhina. 

Lysistrata  forged  another  edge  to  this  powerful  weapon 
by  seizing  the  war  chest  that  was  kept  in  the  Acropolis, 
thereby  shutting  off  the  financial  supplies  accimiulated 
for  the  contractors  and  the  army. 

A  feeble  attempt  was  made  by  some  of  the  old  men 
and  a  superannuated  police  force  to  smoke  the  women 
away  from  the  Acropolis  and  break  up  the  organization, 
but  the  ladies  hastily  procured  pitchers  of  water  from  the 
fountain  and  not  only  extinguished  the  smoky  fires  but 
drenched  the  men,  who  made  a  hasty  retreat  and  left  the 
women  in  full  possession  of  the  rock. 

The  fair  charmers  of  Sparta  having  organized  to  pursue 


156  CENTRAL  GREECE 

a  similar  course,  the  males  of  the  two  States  were  very 
shortly  driven  to  appoint  peace  ambassadors;  and  they 
hurriedly  opened  negotiations  with  Lysistrata,  who 
proved  to  be  as  wily  in  diplomacy  as  she  was  apt  in  the 
art  of  coquetry.  She  pointed  out  the  absurdity  of  internal 
conflicts  among  the  Greeks  when  there  were  so  many 
barbarians  against  whom  the  martially  minded  might 
wage  wars  to  their  swords'  content ;  she  settled  the  con- 
cessions to  be  made  by  each  side,  and  arranged  all  matters 
so  much  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  contending  parties 
that,  with  complete  unanimity,  and  in  very  short  order,  a 
peace  was  concluded  which  restored  to  every  wife  her 
husband. 

The  nearby  cave  associated  with  Apollo  was  a  grotto 
in  which  was  conceived  the  first  chapter  of  the  long  his- 
tory of  the  Ionian  people;  a  history  that  began  with  the 
acceptance  of  Apollo's  addresses  by  Creusa  the  daughter 
of  Erechtheus.  And  it  was  in  the  same  grotto  that  Creusa, 
later  on,  abandoned  her  baby  son  Ion  the  first  of  the 
powerful  Ionian  line. 

After  the  abandonment,  Apollo  showed  a  kindly  in- 
terest in  the  infant  and  had  him  taken  to  his  Delphi 
temple  where  the  boy  was  brought  up  as  one  of  the  Fane's 
officials. 

Subsequently,  Creusa  married  Xuthus  and,  when 
several  years  had  elapsed,  the  two  went  to  Delphi  to 
arouse  the  oracle's  sympathy  in  their  childless  condition 
and  to  obtain  some  advice  for  its  amelioration ;  whereupon 
the  oracle  suggested  that  they  consider  as  their  son  the 
first  male  that  Xuthus  met  on  leaving  the  temple.  That 
person,  by  a  chance  that  Apollo  perhaps  made  no  attempt 
to  avert,  was  Ion;  and  from  the  warmth  of  their  embraces 
when  the  oracle's  suggestion  had  been  explained  to  him, 
Creusa  imagined  that  Ion  was  really  the  son  of  Xuthus, 


ATTICA  157 

aiid,  as  soon  as  possible,  she  attempted  to  have  him  drink 
a  poison  draught  of  dragon's  blood.  The  pious  Ion 
immediately  poured  a  portion  on  the  ground  for  the 
deities  and,  noting  the  instant  death  of  a  pigeon  that 
pecked  at  the  moisture,  turned  upon  his  unknown  mother 
and  would  have  strangled  her  had  not  a  priestess  inter- 
vened and  by  explaining  the  true  situation  brought  about 
cordial  relations  between  the  long-parted  mother  and  son. 
Ion  was  said  to  have  succeeded  Erechtheus  as  king  of 
Athens. 

With  regard  to  Clepsydra  it  might  be  added  that  it 
was  an  intermittent  Spring,  a  feature  that  furnishes  a 
more  likely  explanation  of  its  two  names,  than  the  reason 
previously  quoted  (in  No.  119),  the  occasional  stoppage 
of  the  water  being  called  a  theft  in  one  name,  and  an  im- 
pediment in  the  older  name  of  Empedo. 

Euripides,  "Ion";  lines  482  and  i. 

Pausanias;  I.  28. 

Aristophanes,  "Lysistrata";  lines  912,  838,  and  326. 


121 

Panopus 

The  Spring  of  the  hero  Panopus,  possibly  one  of  the 
hundred  that  Timon  had  in  mind,  was  outside  of  but  near 
the  eastern  wall  of  Athens,  a  little  north  of  the  Gate  of 
Diochares  and  about  midway  between  that  gate  and  the 
Lyceum,  a  garden  with  a  gymnasium,  surrounded  with 
lofty  plane  trees  and  inseparably  connected  with  Aris- 
totle and  his  school  of  Peripatetics,  the  walking  philo- 
sophers. 

The  fountain  furnished  a  large  supply  of  excellent 
water,  and  made  a  brook  that  ran  into  the  river  Ilyssus 
which  passed  a  short  distance  to  the  south  of  it. 


158  CENTRAL  GREECE 

North  of  Aristotle's  Lyceum  and  the  fountain  was  the 
cradle  of  the  Cynic  Philosophy  adopted  by  Diogenes,  the 
name  of  which  came  from  the  school's  garden,  Cyno- 
sarges,  "White  Dog, "  because  such  an  animal  once  stole 
the  sacrificial  meat  that  was  about  to  be  offered  there. 

Panopus,  sometimes  called  Panopeus,  was  the  son  of 
Phocus  who  founded  Panopeus,  the  town  that  had  no 
fountain;  he  was  the  twin  brother  of  Crisus  with  whom 
he  quarreled  before  birth;  and  was  the  father  of  Epeus 
the  designer  of  the  solitary  wooden  horse  with  which  the 
Greeks  won  the  Trojan  war. 

Panopus  took  an  oath  to  be  honest,  and  possibly  the 
fountain  received  its  name  from  having  been  called  on  to 
witness  that  pledge,  a  pledge  that  it  is  disappointing  to 
find  was  taken  in  vain,  for  he  stole  a  part  of  the  booty 
that  was  taken  from  the  Teleboans. 

Strabo;  IX.  i.    §  19. 


122 

Callichorus 

The  Spring  of  Callichorus  might  perhaps  be  viewed  as 
the  first  fount  of  Free  Masonry, 

At  its  brink  the  goddess  Ceres  sat  down  on  the  Sorrow- 
ful Stone  and  was  ministered  to  by  Triptolemus  when 
she  had  become  weary  from  her  wanderings  in  search  of 
her  daughter  Proserpine  whom  Pluto  had  cunningly 
carried  away  and  concealed  in  his  nether  realm. 

And  it  was  here,  on  the  Rharian  plain  that,  afterwards, 
in  gratitude  for  his  sympathy  she  taught  him  how  to 
cultivate  and  harvest  grain;  how  to  use  the  ox  as  a  thresh- 
ing machine  with  his  hoofs  as  flails;  and  showed  him  how 
to  prepare  the  grains  for  eating,  in  place  of  the  acorns 


ATTICA  159 

and  roots  that  formed  the  principal  fare  of  the  primitive 
population. 

At  the  same  time  she  planted  in  his  mind  the  first  seeds 
of  the  rudiments  of  law,  and  of  the  rules  of  justice  and 
right  living. 

And  thus  the  gulf  that  now  separates  civilized  men 
from  the  brutes  has  broadened  out  from  the  little  trench 
that  was  made  to  grow  the  first  small  crop  of  domesti- 
cated wheat  or  barley  that  was  raised  around  the  Spring 
of  Callichorus  and  nourished  to  maturity  by  its  fruitful 
flow. 

Here,  too,  the  goddess  originated  those  rites  of  the 
Eleusinian  Mysteries  which  continued  to  be  performed  at 
the  yearly  festival  of  Ceres  down  to  the  time  of  Alaric. 

They  were  the  annual  nine  days*  wonder  of  Greece,  and 
their  inward  signification  is  still,  to  this  day,  a  puzzle  to 
the  students  of  the  Past,  although  their  processions  and 
pageants  were  a  public  and  absorbing  spectacle  and  the 
outward  forms  of  their  mystic  meetings  became  known 
in  their  minutest  details,  notwithstanding  the  most  care- 
ful precautions  to  keep  them  secret,  and  the  dire  penalties 
imposed,  alike  upon  informers  on  the  inside,  and  spyers 
on  the  outside. 

The  celebrations,  which  occurred  in  spring  and  in 
autiunn,  apparently  preceded  the  rise  of  Hellenic  mjrthol- 
ogy,  and,  in  the  first  instance  perhaps  consisted  of  a 
simple  rustic  song  and  dance  that  were  maybe  addressed 
to  and  performed  for  the  Spring,  as  personifying  the 
patroness  of  the  farmers,  and  conducted  in  commemora- 
tion of  her  civilizing  agricultural  teachings  to  the  kindly 
Triptolemus. 

But,  later,  the  temple  the  order  required  for  its  ritual 
became  the  largest  of  the  sacred  edifices  in  all  Greece; 
it  was  presided  over  by  a  Priest  called  the  Hierophant, 


i6o  CENTRAL  GREECE 

and  the  initiates  took  an  oath  of  secrecy  which  was  re- 
peated with  awful  ceremonies. 

Any  revelation  about  these  secret  ceremonies  was 
punished  by  death,  and  a  similar  penalty  was  imposed 
upon  any  uninitiated  person  who  became  a  spectator  of 
the  rites,  either  through  curiosity  or  by  chance. 

When  the  autumn  proceedings  had  reached  their  most 
elaborate  stage,  nine  days  were  required  for  the  celebra- 
tion which  began  on  the  15th  of  Boedromion,  the  third 
month  of  the  Attic  year  which  corresponded  to  the 
present  month  of  September. 

The  fifth  day  was  called  the  Day  of  Torches,  and  was 
thought  to  symbolize  the  wanderings  of  Ceres  and  her 
visit  to  the  Spring. 

Theodosius  abolished  the  Eleusinian  celebrations  in  the 
IVth  Century  a.d.,  but  college  girls  still  recall  them  in 
annual  dances  and  pantomimes. 

Eleusis  was  near  the  sea  and  opposite  the  island  of 
Salamis.  It  was  destroyed  by  Alaric  in  396  A.D.,  but 
since  the  XVIth  Century  its  site  has  been  occupied  by  a 
little  village  called  Lepsina ;  and  a  Well  where  two  roads 
meet  near  the  village  is  thought  to  be  best  located  to 
prefer  claim  to  being  the  original  source  of  Callichorus. 

Pausanias;  I.  38. 

Callimachus;  Hymn  to  Demeter. 

Ovid.  Fasti;  IV.  line  502. 


123 

The  Well  of  Flowers 

Along  the  side  of  the  road  that  led  from  Eleusis  to 
Megara,  there  was  a  Well  called  The  Well  of  Flowers. 

Pamphos  records  that  it  was  at  this  Well  that  Demeter 
sat  in.  the  guise  of  an  old  woman  after  the  rape  of  Proser- 


ATTICA  i6i 

pine,  and  that  she  was  taken  thence  as  an  old  woman  of 
the  country  by  the  daughters  of  Celeus  to  Metanira  their 
mother.  And  not  far  from  the  Well  was  the  temple  of 
Metanira  the  mother  of  Triptolemus,  and  next  to  it  the 
tombs  of  those  that  fell  at  Thebes,  and  were  buried  in 
the  time  of  Creon. 

Next  to  the  tombs  of  those  heroes  was  the  tomb  of 
Alope  who  was  killed  by  her  father  Cercyon  for  having 
flirted  with  Poseidon,  if  indeed  he  was  not  only  too  glad 
of  that  pretext  to  exercise  his  innate  brutality  which  was 
otherwise  shown  in  his  practise  of  inducing  strangers  to 
compete  with  him  in  wrestling  matches,  in  the  course  of 
which  he  always  killed  them.  At  last,  however,  he  en- 
countered Theseus  who  overcame  him  and  on  the  strength 
of  that  record  successfully  established  training  schools  to 
teach  the  art,  and  is  credited  with  being  the  first  one  to 
elevate  the  exercise  to  a  science.  He  seems  to  have 
taught  a  rudimentary  Jiu  Jitsu  that  enabled  quickness 
and  agility  to  overcome  strength  and  bulk  which,  pre- 
viously, had  been  relied  upon  alone  for  victory  in  contests 
where,  except  with  such  antagonists  as  the  cruel  Cercyon, 
the  object  was  to  throw  one's  opponent  to  the  ground. 

Pamphos  was  a  very  ancient  authority  who  lived 
before  the  time  of  Homer,  but  no  modern  observer  seems 
to  have  seen  a  water  source  that  might  represent  his  Well 
and  it  is  to  be  hoped,  for  the  sake  of  its  pretty  name,  that 
it  ceased  to  flow  through  some  natural  cause,  and  that  it 
is  unnecessary  to  suppose  that  it  is  really  the  Well  of 
Callichorus  that  Pamphos  called  the  Well  of  Flowers — 
and  so  misled  Pausanias.  In  his  Hymn  to  Ceres,  line 
162,  Homer,  apparently  following  the  version  of  Pamphos, 
calls  Callichorus  a  hill,  and  refers  to  Parthenius  as  a 
Spring. 

Pausanias    I.  39. 


i62  CENTRAL  GREECE 

124 

Eridanus 

Near  the  empurpled  hills  of  blooming  Hymettus  there 
was  a  sacred  Spring  around  which  the  ground  was  soft 
with  verdant  turf  and  velvety  grass  intermingled  with 
the  tiny  trefoil,  and  perfumed  with  rosemary,  laurel,  and 
the  swarthy  myrtle. 

Strawberries  and  other  lowly  plants  crept  among  the 
grasses  with  their  brightening  blooms,  and  laid  their 
luscious  fruits  about  in  wild  profusion.  Above  these,  and 
many  an  odorous,  lovely  flower  besides,  slender  trees  with 
interspreading  foliage  formed  a  grove  where  the  leaves  of 
the  box,  the  tamarisk,  and  the  garden  pine,  moved  by  the 
gentle  zephyrs  and  the  balmy  air,  murmured  soft  sounds 
as  with  light  caressing  touch  they  fondled  each  other  and 
quivered  in  the  cooling  breeze. 

Here,  when  the  grasses  undulated  and  the  many  kinds 
of  leaves  nodded  in  joyful  recognition  to  the  visiting 
zephyrs,  Cephalus,  who  had  wedded  Procris,  the  daughter 
of  King  Erechtheus  of  Athens,  was  wont  to  repair  and 
sprinkle  his  glowing  face  with  the  waters  of  the  fountain, 
and  to  call  aloud  in  sportive  mood  to  the  breeze  to  come 
and  fan  him  after  the  heating  exercises  of  the  chase. 

Procris  one  day  hearing  this  jesting  address  to  the 
wind,  mistook  the  name  for  that  of  a  rival,  and,  rushing 
towards  the  Spring  in  jealous  anger,  parted  the  rudely 
obstructing  branches  with  so  much  vigor  that  Cephalus, 
fancying  a  wild  beast  was  approaching,  launched  his 
javelin  in  the  direction  of  the  crackling  twigs  and 
branches. 

This  javelin,  as  appears  in  the  account  of  the  Spring  of 
Psamathe,  had  the  unusual  endowment  of  never  missing 
its  mark,  and  of  always  returning  to  the  hand  of  the 


ATTICA  163 

thrower,  and  in  this  instance  it  pierced  the  heart  of 
Procris  who  fell  forward  into  the  arms  of  her  agonized 
husband  and  expired  a  few  moments  later,  after  being 
convinced  that  her  jealousy  had  been  groundless. 

Cephalus  was  tried  before  the  Court  of  the  Areopagus 
which  acquitted  him  of  all  but  a  lack  of  due  diligence,  for 
which  he  was  sentenced  to  perpetual  banishment  from 
Athens.  He  went  to  live  on  the  largest  island  in  the 
Ionian  Sea,  an  island  belonging  to  him,  and  called  after 
him  Cephallenia,  but,  driven  to  distraction  with  remorse, 
crossed  over  to  the  opposite  promontory  of  Leucata  and 
took  the  lover's  leap  from  it,  being  either  the  first  to  do 
so,  or  the  next  after  Sappho. 

Heat-scarred  rocks  and  scraggly  bushes  have,  for  the 
most  part,  taken  the  places  of  the  former  verdure  that 
brightened  the  banks  of  the  stream  that  flowed  from  the 
Spring  of  Eridanus,  but  the  neighborhood  of  the  Spring 
itself,  at  Syrian! ,  is  described  by  modern  travelers  as  still 
a  spot  of  striking  beauty. 

Ovid.  Art  of  Love ;  III.    In  689. 
Pausanias;  I.  37. 


Cephisia 

The  Fountain  Cephisia  rose  in  a  town  of  the  same 
name  which  was  one  of  the  twelve  original  cities  of  King 
Cecrops  whose  inhabitants  he  brought  together  in  what 
became  Athens. 

This  Spring  was  the  most  distant  source  of  the  Cephis- 
sus  river,  the  Spring  at  Trinemeis  which  Strabo  mentions 
as  the  beginning  of  the  little  stream  being  now  said  to  be 
only  a  minor  tributary's  head. 

In  ancient  times  the  Spring  failed  in  the  siimmer  but  it 


1 64  CENTRAL  GREECE 

has  improved  and  grown  steadier  with  age,  as  the  river 
is  now  said  to  be  the  only  one  in  Attica  that  is  supplied 
with  water  during  the  entire  year. 

The  town  is  at  present  called  Kivisia  and  lies  at  the 
foot  of  Mt.  Pentelicus,  nine  miles  northeast  of  Athens. 
It  is  a  favorite  summer  residence  of  the  present-day 
Athenians,  and  in  one  of  its  many  shady  groves  the 
transparent  waters  of  the  fountain  now  flow  in  a  generous 
stream  even  when  other  Springs  are  dried  by  summer 
droughts. 

Pliny;  IV.  ii. 
Strabo;  IX.  I.     §  20. 


126 

Macaria 

The  Spring  of  Macaria  was  in  the  Plain  of  Marathon 
and  received  its  name  in  the  century  before  the  Trojan 
war,  when  it  was  used  to  insure  victory  to  the  Athenian 
arms. 

One  very  naturally  fancies  that,  seven  centimes  later 
in  B.C.  490,  when  the  Athenians  in  the  same  Plain  were 
about  to  begin  the  historic  battle  of  Marathon  with  the 
Persians,  the  Greek  leaders  did  not  fail  to  point  to  the 
fountain  and  assure  their  soldiers  that  the  Spring  that 
had  insured  victory  to  their  ancestors  could  be  confi- 
dently relied  upon  to  bring  about  (as  it  did)  the  defeat  of 
the  Persians  they  were  on  the  point  of  attacking. 

In  the  ante-Troy  battle,  however,  Greek  met  Greek 
and  not  a  foreign  foe.  The  descendants  of  Hercules  who 
were  called  the  Heracleidas  desired  to  recover  certain  dis- 
tricts in  Greece  which  they  claimed  on  the  ground  that 
Hercules  had  subdued  them,  and  they  went  to  the  Athen- 
ians to  enlist  their  assistance;  whereupon  Eurystheus 


ATTICA  165 

who  had  imposed  the  dozen  hard  labors  on  Hercules,  and 
who  had  no  love  for  his  children,  demanded  that  the 
Athenians  surrender  the  Heracleidae  to  him.  On  their 
refusal  so  to  do  preparations  were  made  to  enforce  the 
demand,  and,  on  the  part  of  the  Athenians,  to  resist; 
preparations  that  began  as  usual  with  requests  that  the 
Oracle  would  foreshadow  the  outcome. 

The  reply,  to  the  Athenians,  was  that  they  would  lose 
unless  one  of  the  children  of  Hercules  should  voluntarily 
die. 

Then  Macaria,  the  daughter  of  Dejaneira  and  Hercules, 
sacrificed  herself  in  order  that  the  allies  and  her  relatives 
might  conquer ;  and  the  fountain  received  its  name  from 
her  act  of  heroism,  a  heroism  all  the  more  worthy  of 
homage  when  it  is  considered  that  in  one  abnormally 
long  but  incomplete  list  of  66  children  of  Hercules 
every  one  was  a  putative  hero  save  fond  Macaria,  who 
was  the  only  heroine,  unless  there  was  another  daugh- 
ter among  the  72  children  that  Aristotle  says  Hercules 
had. 

lolaus,  the  son  of  Iphicles  who  was  half  brother  to, 
and  one  night  younger  than  Hercules,  received  permis- 
sion to  return  from  the  lower  regions  to  engage  in  this 
battle,  in  which  he  slew  Eurystheus,  and  dragging  him  to 
the  fountain  there  beheaded  him. 

The  spot  was  close  to  the  chariot  road  and  was  ever 
afterwards  called  "Eurystheus'  head." 

The  Spring  of  Macaria  still  issues  from  the  foot  of  some 
rocks  on  the  northern  side  of  the  level  and  grassy  Plain 
which  is  Marathon,  and  forms  a  marsh  into  which  the 
Persians,  in  the  historical  battle,  were  driven  and  drowned 
in  large  numbers. 

Pausanias;  I.  32. 
Strabo;  VIII.6.    §19. 


i66  CENTRAL  GREECE 

127 
Larine 

The  Fountain  Larine  is  said  by  Pliny  to  have  been  in 
Attica,  but  he  gives  no  particulars  about  it  or  its  pecu- 
liarities or  its  exact  position. 

Pliny;  IV.  11. 


128 

Attic  Fountain 

There  was  an  Attic  Fountain  celebrated  in  the  "Phae- 
drus  "  of  Plato,  the  Athenian  comic  poet.  He  is  supposed 
to  have  lived  about  400  B.C.,  but  there  is  little  left  of  his 
works  save  a  list  of  the  titles  of  the  plays,  although  he  was 
considered  next  to  Aristophanes  in  popularity. 

Strabo;  IX.  i.    §  «4. 


BCEOTIA 

129 
Thebes 

Following  one  of  the  many  traditions  that  Greek  his- 
torians furnish,  it  may  be  said  that  the  vicinity  of  Thebes 
was  first  inhabited  by  the  Ectenes  under  King  Ogygus, 
and  was  called  Ogygas. 

These  people  were  carried  off  by  a  pestilence  and  were 
replaced  by  the  Hyantes  and  the  Aones  whom  Cadmus 
found  in  possession  on  his  arrival  from  Phoenicia. 

The  Hyantes  he  drove  away  but  he  allowed  the  Aones 
to  remain. 

The  succession  of  rulers,  from  Cadmus  down  to  Dirce's 
transformation  into  Thebes'  youngest  Spring,  was; — 
Polydorus;  Labdacus;  Lycus  with  his  wife  Dirce;  and 
those  were  followed  by  Amphion  and  Zethus;  Laius; 
CEdipus  and  others  down  to  the  time  of  the  Trojan 
war. 

Nearly  twenty  centuries  after  the  period  assigned  to 
the  existence  of  Cadmus,  the  neighborhood  of  Thebes  was 
still  an  open  air  museum  filled  with  objects  connected 
with  these  characters  and  their  contemporaries. 

With  Electricity  not  then  broken  to  harness  for  the 
carriage  of  news,  the  local  legends  were  negligibly  older 
than  the  tidings  of  the  day  from  the  outside  world. 

They  were  far  more  interesting  and  more  delightfully 
told,  and  one  may  turn  to  them  even  today  with  a  sigh 
of  happy  relief  after  glancing  at  the  headings  of  fifty 

167 


i68  CENTRAL  GREECE 

newspaper  columns  reporting  more  horrors  and  crimes 
than  a  hecalogue  carefully  drawn  up  would  cover. 

Modern  Historical  Societies,  pointing  around  to  a  cart- 
load of  tablets,  might  blush  for  their  laziness  when  read- 
ing of  the  energy  of  the  Thebans  in  marking  their  places  of 
interest.  Beginning  with  the  event  that  brought  Cadmus 
to  the  country,  they  pointed  out  the  place  where  Jupiter 
hid  Europa — a  place  so  near  where  her  brother  gave  up 
the  search  that  on  a  quiet  day  he  might  have  heard  her 
screams  if  she  had  made  an  outcry — and  they  con- 
tinued with  unflagging  vigor,  locating  the  spot  where 
the  cow  first  lowed;  where  she  lay  down;  where  the 
dragon  appeared;  where  the  teeth  were  sown;  and 
kept  on  until  every  detail  of  the  first  part  of  the 
legend  was  riveted  to  some  mound  or  hill  or  rock  or 
field  or  Spring, 

Then,  applying  their  attention  to  the  town,  they 
marked  the  house  of  Cadmus,  converted  into  a  Temple  of 
Demeter;  and  the  spot  in  the  market  place  where  the 
Muses  stood  and  sang  at  his  marriage  with  Harmonia,  as 
well  as  her  bridal  chamber ;  and  also  the  lightning-struck 
room  where  Zeus  paid  his  court  to  her  daughter  Semele. 
And  delving  deeply  into  the  rubbish  heaps  of  the  Past, 
they  even  rescued  and  preserved  odds  and  ends  of  me- 
mentos for  the  inspection  of  posterity ;  ancient  armor  and 
out-of-date  weapons  tagged  with  the  names  of  the  battles 
they  won  or  the  soldiers  who  used  them ;  pieces  of  wood 
from  Cadmus*  ship;  remains  of  furniture,  such  as  frag- 
ments of  the  bridal  bedsteads  of  the  prominent  ladies  of 
the  Cadmean  family,  not  forgetting  to  hunt  up  parts  of 
the  bed  of  Alcmena  the  mother  of  Hercules. 

When  every  feature  of  the  neighborhood  had  been 
appropriately  connected  with  some  incident  in  the  lives 
of  these  people,  then  the  roads  were  walled  with  their 


BCEOTIA  169 

statues  and  tombs,  or  with  cenotaphs  in  the  cases  of 
those  whose  existence  was  terminated  abroad. 

At  the  tomb  of  Amphion  no  Httle  additional  interest 
was  excited  by  the  presence  of  a  number  of  stones  lying 
about  in  no  particular  order,  the  members  of  a  pathetic 
funeral  deputation  of  the  rocks  that  had  so  often  moved 
to  Amphion's  music  when  he  was  alive. 

All  of  the  local  heroes  having  thus  been  monumental- 
ized, and  the  highway's  margin  still  affording  vacant 
spaces,  a  commission  was  sent  across  the  seas  to  search 
for  celebrated  heroes'  bones,  and  brought  back  Hector's 
body  from  the  plains  of  Troy  and  placed  it  in  a  tomb 
along  the  roadside. 

To  the  Thebans,  the  riddle  of  the  Sphinx  was  not  the 
usually  accepted  classical  conundriun,  but  the  more  inti- 
mate question,  "What  did  the  Oracle  say  to  Cadmus?", 
and  the  number  of  the  Sphinx's  victims  was  small  enough 
to  show  how  few  people  in  the  neighborhood  had  not 
committed  the  conversation  to  heart. 

In  such  an  atmosphere  even  infants  breathed  in  patriot- 
ism and  pride  perforce.  No  boy  with  a  spark  of  imagina- 
tion could  drink  at  the  Spring  in  the  dragon's  cave,  or  go 
through  the  field  where  the  armed  men  grew  and  fought, 
without  feeling  each  fiber  tingle  with  the  valor  with  which 
every  surrounding  was  saturated;  and  men  were  made 
emulative  heroes  by  the  stirring  associations  linked  with 
each  natural  feature  they  had  to  pass  in  even  such  com- 
monplace tasks  as  driving  the  flocks  home  through 
meadows  and  forests,  or  watering  them  at  the  fountains, 
of  which  Thebes  had  so  many  that  it  was  described,  as 
late  as  the  third  century  before  Christ,  as  being  "all 
Springs." 

Four  of  these  fountains  overflowed  into  the  literature 
of  their  countrymen;  the  Spring  of  Ares  in  the  east;  of 


I70  CENTRAL  GREECE 

Dirce  in  the  west ;  and  of  Strophie  in  the  center ;  they  were 
feeders  of  three  rivers,  the  Ismenus  and  the  Dirce  which 
ran  about  a  mile  apart,  and  the  Strophia  which  ran 
between  them,  all  of  them  traveling  northward.  And  a 
short  distance  beyond  the  walls  there  was  the  fountain 
of  CEdipus. 

In  addition  to  this  number  of  water  sources,  the  city 
derived  a  supply  from  an  unlocated  body  that  is  thought 
to  have  been  tapped  in  ante-historical  times  and  that 
was  brought  to  the  town  through  an  aqueduct  coming 
from  the  south. 

The  fountain  of  Ares  as  the  foundation  Spring  of  the 
city  is  geographically  the  most  important  one  of  the  town, 
but  its  fame  has  been  overshadowed  by  the  prominence 
that  has  been  given  to  the  Spring  of  Dirce,  both  in  poetry 
and  in  prose. 

Pausanias;  IX.  9.  et  seg. 


130 

Dirce 

The  most  famous  of  the  many  Theban  Springs  is 
Dirce.  It  was  written  about  by  scientists,  travelers  and 
poets,  and  especially  by  Pindar  the  poet  of  sportsmen. 
Likening  the  flow  of  his  song  to  the  stream  of  the  Spring, 
his  promise,  to  give  the  athletes  the  pure  water  of  Dirce 
to  drink,  was  only  a  modest  way  of  announcing  that 
another  ode  was  about  to  be  put  forth  for  the  heroes  of 
the  stadiimi. 

He  called  it  the  Glorious  Fount  of  Dirce,  and,  holding 
that  man  dull  who  did  not  mention  its  waters,  referred  to 
them  so  frequently,  and  lived  so  near  them,  that  Horace 
styled  him  the  Dircean  Swan,  a  term  that  may  have  a 


BCEOTIA      .  .  171 

trace  of  pity  for  the  author's  praise  of  water,  or  maybe 
one  of  envy;  for  in  the  ever-recurring  Grecian  games 
there  were  many  hundred  more  victors  to  pay  Pindar  for 
his  paeans  than  there  were  wine  growers  wilHng  to  help 
Horace  on  the  way  to  fortune  with  his  vinous  verses. 

Still,  Pindar,  like  Dirce,  remains  one  of  the  principal 
realities  of  Thebes.  Many  of  its  other  celebrities;  CEdi- 
pus  the  king;  Amphiaraus  and  Tiresias,  the  seers;  Her- 
cules, the  personification  of  strength,  who  was  thought  to 
have  derived  a  part  of  his  power  from  drinking  the  waters 
of  Dirce,  were  all  but  little  more  than  such  creations  as 
Pindar  himself  had  a  part  in  bringing  to  life  in  literature. 
Thus,  perhaps,  felt  Alexander  when  he  ruined  the  city  so 
completely  that  even  the  daughters  of  Arachne,  the  city's 
spiders,  were  saddened  with  the  foresight  of  the  awful 
wreck,  and  showed  their  sorrow  by  weaving  their  webs  in 
mournful  black.  He  pulled  down  the  mansions  of  myth- 
ology as  scornfully  as  he  leveled  the  huts  of  the  rabble ; 
he  regarded  neither  the  palace  of  Lycus  nor  the  home 
of  Amphitryon  and  Hercules.  There  was  seemingly  no 
structure  in  all  the  town  that  he  cared  to  save  except  the 
house  that  Pindar  lived  in  on  the  bank  of  the  Dirce 
river,  for  that  was  the  only  one  the  conqueror  left  intact. 

Bacchus  is  said  to  have  been  brought  up  at  the  foun- 
tain of  Dirce;  but  as  Bacchus  was  born  before  Dirce's 
time  that  is  perhaps  a  euphemism  regarding  some  occa- 
sion when  Bacchus  was  brought  to  rather  than  up  by 
means  of  its  cold  waters. 

Grecian  Thebes,  less  rich  in  gates  than  her  Egyptian 
sister  city  with  a  hundred,  had  only  seven,  and  the  one 
which  stood  near  the  fountain  of  Dirce  was  named  the 
Crenoea  or  Dircean  Gate. 

The  pessimist  of  the  XXth  century  may  take  heart  of 
grace  and  feel  a  renewal  of  waning  faith  in  the  revival  of 


172  CENTRAL  GREECE 

retributive  justice  when  finding  its  waters  at  hard  labor, 
turning  a  mill  and  expiating  the  cruelties  that  in  the  city's 
early  days  Dirce,  as  the  queen  of  King  Lycus  of  Thebes, 
practised  in  her  persecutions  of  Antiope;  cruelties  that 
were  suddenly  cut  short  in  a  very  unexpected  manner. 

It  was  the  relentless  jealousy  of  Dirce  that  caused  the 
Spring's  tragic  birth. 

Even  after  Lycus  had  discarded  his  niece-wife  Antiope 
in  Dirce's  favor,  Dirce  continued  to  persecute  her  with 
ever  increasing  vindictiveness.  Not  content  with  shred- 
ding her  face  with  her  cruel  nails,  and  even  setting  fire 
to  her  fair  and  alluring  locks,  she  reduced  her  to  a  state 
of  servitude,  and  imposed  upon  her  the  most  menial  and 
degrading  tasks. 

She  even  went  further  in  order  to  tire  her  out  with 
want  of  rest,  and  forced  her  to  live  in  a  dark  and  dirty 
quarter  where  she  could  dispose  her  wearied  and  tortured 
body  only  upon  the  bare,  hard  ground. 

To  these  torments  she  added  those  of  hunger  and  thirst, 
withholding  all  but  such  little  nourishment  as  was  ab- 
solutely necessary  to  sustain  a  weak  spark  of  life  in  her 
emaciated  frame. 

At  last,  upon  a  certain  cold  night,  Antiope  succeeded 
in  escaping,  and  managed  to  drag  herself  to  a  place  of 
refuge  which  she  reached  in  an  exhausted  and  fainting 
condition. 

Her  respite,  however,  bade  fair  to  be  of  but  short  dura- 
tion, for  Dirce  pursued  and  discovered  her,  and  had 
perfected  arrangements  to  have  her  tied  to  the  horns  of 
a  mad  and  frothing  bull  and  dragged  to  death,  when  two 
of  the  assistants,  who,  abandoned  in  infancy,  had  been 
brought  up  in  the  belief  that  they  were  only  ordinary 
shepherds,  fortunately  discovering  that  Antiope  was  their 
mother,  seized  Dirce  and  immediately  meted  out  to  her 


BCEOTIA  173 

the  horrible  fate  that  she  herself  had  fiendishly  devised 
for  Antiope — and,  either  because  the  sentient  and  horri- 
fied earth  refused  to  retain  her  tears  of  agony,  or  the 
streams  from  her  wounds,  and  threw  them  forth  as  this 
ever  bubbling  fountain;  or  because  she  was  cast  into  it, 
it  thenceforth  bore  her  name. 

The  incident  is  represented  in  the  statuary  group  called 
The  Farnese  Bull,  found  in  1546  in  the  Thermse  of  Cara- 
calla,  and  now  in  the  National  Museum  at  Naples. 

But  the  gruesome  legend  of  barbarities  does  not  con- 
clude with  the  loss  of  Dirce's  human  life.  She  had  been 
a  prominent  devotee  in  celebrating  the  rites  of  Bacchus, 
and  that  deity  in  revenge  for  her  transformation,  and 
possibly  considering  her  watery  fate  an  innuent  injury, 
added  another  dash  of  misery  to  the  cup  of  Antiope  by 
infiicting  that  hapless  being  with  madness.  ■ 

In  the  end,  however,  she  was  happily  cured  of  that 
disease  by  the  grandson  of  Sisyphus,  Phocus,  who  in 
saving  her  mind  lost  his  heart  and  received  her  hand  in 
marriage  as  his  fee,  and  after  a  life  of  happy  union  they 
were  laid  at  rest  together. 

Antiope's  sons,  the  two  quondam  shepherds,  Zethus, 
and  Amphion  who  laid  the  walls  with  the  magic  music  of 
his  lyre,  came  into  their  own  and  prospered  in  due  mea- 
sure until  the  loss  of  Amphion's  children  and  Niobe 
his  wife,  the  children  all  killed  suddenly  and  in  the 
same  moment,  drove  him  to  end  his  life  with  a  sword 
thrust.  He  and  his  brother  were  buried  in  one  grave 
and  worshiped  as  the  Theban  Dioscuri  with  white 
horses. 

There  was  an  extensive  grove  by  the  Spring  where 
sacrifices  for  the  dead ,  and  other  rites ,  were  performed ,  and 
in  which  there  appears  to  have  been  laid  out  a  park  and 
driveway,  or  a  race-course,  as  Sophocles,  writing  of  the 


1^-41  CENTRAL  GREECE 

fountain,  mentions  its  "spacious  grove  where  Thebe's 
chariots  move." 

The  Thebans,  somewhat  oddly,  seem  to  have  held  this 
Spring  in  little  less  veneration  than  they  did  their  tutelar 
dragon;  they  swore  "By  the  fountain  of  Dirce"  in  regis- 
tering a  vow,  or  in  emphasizing  a  statement;  and  they 
considered  its  waters  as  the  most  nourishing  of  all  the 
Springs  with  which  the  Ocean  had  endowed  the  earth. 

Lord  Byron,  always  anxious  to  make  personal  trial  of 
the  founts  that  had  inspired  the  poetry  of  his  predecessors, 
visited  the  Spring  and  wrote;  "The  fountain  of  Dirce 
turns  a  mill,  at  least  my  companion  (who,  resolved  to  be 
at  once  cleanly  and  classical,  bathed  in  it),  pronounced 
it  to  be  the  Fountain  of  Dirce." 

Nowadays,  several  Springs  contribute  to  the  western 
stream,  and  the  one  called  Paraporti  is  supposed  to  be  the 
ancient  Dirce ;  the  river  that  receives  its  waters  is  now  the 
Platziotissa. 

Apollodorus;  III.  5-    5  S- 
Propertius;  Elegy  IV.  IS. 


Ares 

The  history  of  this  Spring  begins  about  2084  B.C.,  in 
the  days  of  the  letter  carrier  Cadmus  who  is  credited  with 
the  introduction  of  the  germs  of  the  alphabet  into  Greece. 

Cadmus  had  been  sent  out  by  his  father  Agenor,  a 
Phoenician  King,  and  commanded  to  search  for  and  not 
to  return  without  his  sister  Europa,  who  had  been  lured 
away  by  a  beautiful  snow-white  bull  into  which  Jupiter 
had  metamorphosed  himself  as  an  incognito  under  which 
to  pursue  another  of  his  numerous  gallantries  without 
attracting  undue  attention. 


BCEOTIA  175 

Being  in  a  strange  country,  and  unable  to  trace  the 
whereabouts  of  the  bull,  Cadmus  applied  to  the  Delphic 
Oracle  for  assistance  in  his  search,  much  as  Saul  in  his 
search  for  the  asses  turned  to  the  Prophet  for  help. 

The  Oracle,  adapting  to  the  needs  of  Cadmus  the  idea 
in  Dumas'  more  elegant  and  celebrated  phrase  of  "  Cher- 
chez  la  femme, "  advised  him  to  find  and  follow  a  cow,  and 
also  to  found  a  city  wherever  she  might  lie  down. 

If  one  cares  to  place  credence  in  the  Sidonian  account 
of  Cadmus,  a  hidden  sarcasm  may  be  found  in  thus 
setting  a  king's  son  a  cowherd's  task;  and  the  more 
readily  if  a  ruminating  reader  finds  it  strange  that  a 
father  who  had  lost  a  daughter  should  run  the  additional 
risk  of  losing  a  son  by  forbidding  him  the  house  until  he 
found  her;  and  that  the  son  should  so  soon  have  relin- 
quished the  search  for  his  sister;  for  according  to  the 
holy  history  of  the  Sidonians  Cadmus  was  a  cook  in  a 
king's  kitchen,  and  his  heavenly  ancestored  wife  Har- 
monia  was,  in  the  same  palace,  a  music  girl  slave  with 
whom  he  ran  away. 

Shortly  after  receiving  the  Oracle's  order,  Cadmus 
espied  a  cow  in  the  land  of  Phocis,  and  followed  her  until 
she  finally  came  to  rest  in  Boeotia;  and  there  he  began 
without  delay  the  necessary  preliminaries  to  establishing 
a  city.  Thus,  although  many  towns  seem  to  like  to  ac- 
count for  the  crookedness  of  their  streets  by  explaining 
that  they  were  laid  out  by  the  cows,  Grecian  Thebes  can 
claim  the  first  recorded  instance  of  the  site  of  a  city  itself 
having  been  selected  by  one  of  its  cattle. 

Seeking  water  from  a  running  Spring  for  the  first  pre- 
liminary of  the  required  ceremonies,  his  retinue  found  it 
in  a  near-by  fountain  which  issued  from  a  cavern  that  lay 
in  an  ancient  grove  of  virgin  forest. 

The  Spring,  surrounded  with  twigs  and  osiers,  and  pro- 


176  CENTRAL  GREECE  •■    ' 

tected  with  an  arch  formed  by  the  junction  of  the  rocks, 
was  sacred  to  Mars,  and  was  guarded  by  a  dragon, 
adorned  with  crests,  of  now  a  golden,  and,  again,  an  azure 
color ;  his  eyes  sparkled  with  fire ;  all  his  body  was  puffed 
out  with  poison,  and  he  had  three  tongues  which  he 
brandished  about  from  between  a  triple  row  of  teeth. 

The  splashing  of  the  water  urn  in  the  Spring  aroused 
the  savage  dragon,  which,  after  killing  all  the  party  save 
Cadmus,  was  finally  slain  by  the  latter. 

The  dragon's  teeth  sown  in  the  ground  at  once  pro- 
duced a  marvelous  crop  of  armed  men  who  fought  furi- 
ously among  themselves  until  only  five  remained.  With 
these  five  conquerors,  Cadmus  laid  out  and  began  the 
building  of  the  city  which,  out  of  courtesy  to  the  leader, 
was  quite  naturally  at  first  called  Cadmea. 

The  figure  of  a  lance  appeared  on  the  shoulders  of  the 
five  heroes  and  was  transmitted  as  a  birthmark  to  their 
descendants  down  to  the  time  of  Plutarch. 

The  anger  of  Ares  at  the  destruction  of  his  dragon  and 
the  capture  of  his  Spring  was  fortunately  so  far  appeased 
that  he  afterwards  gave  Harmonia,  his  and  Aphrodite's 
daughter,  to  Cadmus  as  wife. 

It  remained,  however,  for  Amphion  two  generations 
later  to  construct  the  walls  of  the  town,  which  he  did 
with  no  more  effort  than  was  required  to  play  upon  his 
lyre,  at  the  sounds  of  which  the  enchanted  stones  grouped 
themselves  together  in  their  proper  positions. 

Zethus,  the  brother  of  this  musical  mason,  having 
married  the  daughter  of  Asopus,  Thebe,  the  walled  town 
was  then  named  in  her  honor.  It  has  been  known,  too, 
by  still  another  name,  Dipotamos,  because  of  its  position 
between  two  streams,  the  Ismenus,  and  the  Dirce  now 
called  the  Platziotissa. 

Many  centuries  after  the  founding  of  Thebes,  the 


BCEOTIA  177 

country  around  it  became  what  has  been  named  "The 
dancing  ground  of  Ares,"  and  the  town  frequently  felt 
itself  called  upon  to  engage  in  wars  and  battles,  down  to 
the  time  of  Alexander  who  reduced  it  to  ruins  and  sold 
its  inhabitants ;  and  in  all  of  these  emergencies  the  leaders 
from  Pentheus  down  found  no  surer  way  to  rouse  the 
courage  of  the  Thebans  and  stimulate  their  martial 
energy,  than  by  referring  to  the  valiancy  of  their  ancestor 
dragon  and  entreating  them  to  emulate  the  valor  he 
showed  in  defending  his  immemorial  fountain;  a  valor 
that  inspired  the  same  feeling  that  made  the  early 
Roman  soldier  believe  himself  more  fierce  than  fighters 
who  had  had  no  wolf  at  the  root  of  their  racial  tree.  The 
gleaming  shield  of  Alcmseon  was  resplendent  with  a 
many-colored  dragon,  and  it  seems  natural  that  a  similar 
device  should  have  adorned  the  banners  of  the  army 
which,  under  the  command  of  Epaminondas,  became  the 
best  body  of  fighting  men  in  all  of  Greece. 

'  In  the  days  when  Thebes  was  described  as  the  city 
where  mortal  women  became  mothers  of  gods,  the  Spring 
of  Ares  was  called  Ismenus  after  a  son  of  Apollo  by  Melia, 
and  sometimes,  also,  Melia;  but  before  that  time  it  was 
called  Ladon,  a  name  associated  with  dragons,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  guardian  of  the  gardens  of  the  Hesperides. 

In  the  2d  century  a.  d.,  the  Spring  was  still  referred  to 
as  sacred  to  Ares,  and  was  described  as  to  the  right  of  the 
gate  that  guarded  the  road  that  led  from  Platsea,  and 
somewhat  higher  than  a  temple  of  Apollo  that  stood  on  a 
hill. 

Today,  as  the  Turkish  town  Thiva,  with  less  than  five 
thousand  people,  Thebes  can  point  to  practically  no 
remains  of  all  its  ancient  architectural  glories — its  armies 
and  walls  of  enchantment  proved  futile  to  preserve  it 
from  the  ravages  of  its  numerous  enemies ;  but  the  Spring 


178  CENTRAL  GREECE 

of  Ares,  though  quite  defenseless,  deprived  of  its  watchful 
dragon  and  bereft  of  the  drago-human  protectors  who 
succeeded  it,  has  calmly  survived  the  vicissitudes  of  forty 
centuries  that  have  elapsed  since  the  days  of  Cadmus  and 
his  guiding  cow. 

Its  latest  name,  Ai  lanni,  is  taken  from  the  church  of 
St.  John  the  shadow  of  whose  spire,  suggestive  of  a 
dragon's  tail,  is  thrown  protectively  across  the  waters 
that  are  still  as  clear  and  copious  as  when  Cadmus  first 
saw  them  issuing  from  their  cavern  in  the  ancient  grove 
of  virgin  forest  and  their  purity  appealed  to  him  for  use 
in  his  ceremonial  rites. 

Ovid;  Meta.  III.    Fable  I. 
Athenaeus;  XIV.  77. 


132 

Strophie 

The  Spring  of  Strophie,  which  was  the  source  of  the 
middle  one  of  the  three  rivers  that  ran  through  Thebes, 
is  named  by  Callimachus,  but  he  makes  no  allusion  to 
its  story  or  to  the  origin  of  the  name;  neither  do  other 
writers  throw  any  direct  light  upon  the  subject. 

Strophius  was  the  father  of  Pylades  who  lived  in  the 
neighboring  district  of  Phocis,  and  possibly  a  daughter 
of  his  gave  name  to  the  Spring,  but  no  account  of  the 
circumstance  seems  to  have  been  preserved. 

Callimachus;  Hymn  to  Delos;  line  74- 


Antiope 

Eleutherae  was  a  town  situated  where  an  edge  of  the 
Rharian  Plain  began  to  slope  upwards  to  the  towering 


BCEOTIA  179 

heights  of  Mt.  Cithaeron  which  rises  to  an  altitude  of 
4600  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea. 

In  the  Plain,  a  short  distance  from  the  town,  there 
was  a  charming  little  temple  to  Dionysus  with  so  pret- 
ty a  statue  of  the  god  that  the  art-admiring  Athen- 
ians afterwards  carried  it  off  to  adorn  their  own  city 
in  Attica. 

By  the  temple  there  was  a  no  less  charming  grotto  that 
looked  upon  a  Spring  of  cold  and  sparkling  water;  and 
on  a  soundless  summer's  day  when  the  cozy  retreat  of 
that  grotto  was  soft  carpeted  with  ferns  and  velvet  moss, 
its  rocky  entrance  framed  a  pleasing  picture  of  the  grace- 
ful god,  the  tree-leaf  shaded  Spring,  and  distant  hills 
whose  gentle  undulations,  far  across  the  Plain  and  thinly 
veiled  in  softening  azure  haze,  lay  in  charming  curves 
along  the  sky  like  a  band  of  lazy  clouds,  loitering  in  their 
course  to  take  a  noontime  rest. 

There  in  the  grotto,  on  such  a  day,  Antiope  once 
stopped  while  on  her  way  to  Thebes,  and  giving  birth  to 
twins  she  left  them  to  their  fate,  which  the  inquisitive 
midgets  did  what  was  best  to  make  a  pleasant  one,  by 
crawling  into  the  open  towards  the  Spring  where  they 
were  fortunately  discovered  by  a  shepherd  who  gave 
them  their  first  bath  in  it,  and,  taking  them  to  his  moun- 
tain home,  reared  them  both  to  lusty  manhood. 

The  shepherd  kept  them  in  ignorance  of  the  secret  of 
their  birth  and  of  the  fact  that  they  were  the  children  of 
a  Queen,  one  of  the  most  famous  beauties  of  her  time  and, 
like  Helen,  the  cause  of  a  war. 

It  was  waged  by  Nycteus,  her  father,  a  grandson  of 
Neptune,  against  Epopeus,  the  King  of  Sicyon,  because 
the  latter  had  abducted  Antiope  and  married  her  against 
the  paternal  protests.  This  war  was  won  by  Epopeus  but 
after  his  death  the  Sicyonians  surrendered  Antiope  to 


i8o  CENTRAL  GREECE 

her  Uncle  Lycus  who  became  her  husband  as  well  as  her 
guardian.  Mention  is  made  of  her  subsequent  sore  trials 
under  the  Spring  of  Dirce,  No.  130. 

One  may  easily  guess  why  these  two  little  boys,  the 
sons  of  Jupiter,  were  left  to  the  chance  that  some  tender- 
hearted passer-by  would  find  them ;  and  it  was  fortunate 
for  the  music  loving  world,  and  especially  for  the  wall- 
less  town  of  Thebes,  that  a  kindly  disposed  person  came 
upon  them  in  the  daylight  as  they  sprawled  about  in 
dangerous  proximity  to  the  chilly  and  unguarded  waters 
of  the  Spring,  for  they  were  the  Amphion  and  Zethus 
who  as  stalwart  youths  discovered  their  parentage  in 
opportune  time  to  save  their  mother's  life,  and  after- 
wards played  no  paltry  part  in  the  making  of  Thebes, 
and  in  its  history,  as  mentioned  in  the  account  of  the 
Spring  of  Dirce. 

From  a  fragment  of  a  temple  column,  a  modern  archaeo- 
logist may  describe  the  structure  it  belonged  to  with  the 
same  uncanny  certainty  that  Cuvier  showed  in  remodel- 
ing fossils  of  bygone  ages  from  a  single  bone  of  their 
skeletons;  for,  owing  to  the  accuracy  with  which  the 
ancient  architects  adhered  to  the  rules  of  proportion  for 
the  several  orders,  the  size  of  a  structure  can  be  fairly 
surmised  if  enough  of  a  column  is  found  to  allow  of 
measuring  a  chord  of  its  fluting;  and  skilful  modern 
travelers  have  therefore  accomplished  wonders  in  iden- 
tifying sites  by  the  ruins  of  buildings  of  which  old  descrip- 
tions have  been  preserved. 

In  the  case  of  Eleutherae,  however,  the  ancient  writers 
themselves  did  not  agree  on  its  location;  it  had  been  on 
the  borders  of  Attica  and  Bceotia,  and  some  placed  it  in 
the  former  while  others  put  it  in  the  latter  country,  the 
present  result  of  which  is  three  different  locations  for  its 
site,  viz.,  east  of  Myupoli;  west  of  Skirta;  and,  near 


BCEOTIA  iM 

Kundara,   each  traveler  being  guided   by   a  different 
ancient  author  in  making  his  selection. 

Pausanias;  I.  38.     II.  6. 


The  Well  of  CEdipus 

Leaving  Thebes  by  the  gate  of  Proetis,  a  highway 
stretched  onwards  to  Chalcis. 

In  front  of  the  gate  was  a  race-course,  and  then  on  the 
right  hand  side  a  hippodrome  in  which,  very  appro- 
priately, reposed  the  remains  of  the  poet  Pindar  whose 
honeyed  lips  were  devoted  to  the  praises  of  its  patrons 
and  the  victors  in  the  contests  that  took  place  in  its 
precincts.  His  passion  for  poetry  and  the  sweetness  of 
his  song  were  said  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  when  he  went 
to  sleep  in  his  youth  the  bees  selected  his  lips  on  which  to 
deposit  their  honey. 

•  A  short  distance  further  on,  after  passing  a  number  of 
tombs,  the  most  prominent  of  which  were  those  of  the 
children  of  CEdipus;  that  of,  or,  rather,  the  cenotaph  of 
Tiresias ;  and  the  tomb  of  Hector  the  son  of  King  Priam 
of  Troy,  one  came  to  the  Well  of  CEdipus. 

It  having  been  prophesied  to  King  Laius  that  he  would 
be  slain  by  his  son,  the  King  undertook  to  make  this 
decree  of  Fate  abortive  by  having  his  son  killed  in  in- 
fancy. CEdipus,  however,  having  been  raised  to  manliood 
by  the  pitying  agent  entrusted  with  the  execution,  one 
day  met  his  unknown  father  on  this  road,  and,  in  a  dis- 
pute that  arose  over  the  right  of  way,  killed  him;  and 
then  in  this  Spring,  as  the  modern  version  is,  essayed  to 
purge  himself  of  his  patricidal  sin ;  or,  as  Pausanias  more 
blimtly  puts  it,  he  washed  off  in  it  the  blood  of  his 
father's  murder. 


1 82  CENTRAL  GREECE 

From  this  circumstance  the  Spring  was  known  there- 
after among  the  ancients  as  the  Well  of  CEdipus.  But 
after  the  introduction  of  Christianity  it  was  rechristened 
with  the  name  of  one  of  the  Saints,  and  is  today  still 
called  the  fountain  of  St.  Theodore,  perhaps  after  that 
one,  of  the  28  Theodores  who  became  Saints,  whom  the 
Greeks  honor  on  the  first  Saturday  in  Lent,  and  who 
belonged  to  a  Roman  cohort  and  was  martyred  in  306, 
February  17th.  His  head  is  still  preserved  in  Gaeta, 
though  his  body  was  sent  to  Brindisi. 

Pausanias;  IX.  i8. 


AULIS 

Aulis  was  the  daughter  of  Ogygus,  that  autochthonal 
King  of  the  territory  of  Thebes,  who  reigned  long  before 
Cadmus  came  into  the  country  with  his  letters,  those 
teeth  by  which  men  devour  learning  and  which,  sown  in 
the  field  of  argument,  produce  such  angry  disputations 
and  bitter  wars  of  words.  Hence,  possibly,  there  is  no 
record  of  the  very  ancient  and  perhaps  absorbing  incident 
from  which  this  Spring  derived  the  name  of  the  primitive 
princess. 

It  was  by  this  fountain's  sacred  brink,  where  a  plane 
tree  shed  its  shade  around,  that  the  fate  of  Troy  was 
confirmed  and  its  destruction  foreshadowed. 

The  Grecian  hosts  gathered  at  Aulis  and,  at  first,  eager 
to  sail  to  the  siege  of  the  distant  city,  had  been  there 
becalmed  and  weather  bound  for  so  long  a  time  that  they 
had  nearly  lost  their  relish  for  making  a  lengthy  sea  trip 
and  engaging  in  a  war  of  whose  success  there  seemed, 
with  each  day  of  delay,  to  be  less  and  less  assurance. 


BCEOTIA  183 

They  were  on  the  verge  of  abandoning  the  adventure 
when  the  miracle  of  the  mysterious  disappearance  of 
Iphigenia,  about  to  be  sacrificed  to  appease  the  wrath 
of  a  goddess  quite  innocently  deprived  of  a  pet  animal, 
and  the  no  less  astonishing  substitution  of  a  doe  in  her 
place,  had  just  put  them  in  a  proper  receptive  mood ;  so 
that  when,  at  this  moment,  they  saw  a  mighty  dragon 
rear  its  sanguinary  spires  to  a  nest,  in  the  top  of  the  plane 
tree,  and  devour  its  occupants,  eight  fledglings  and  their 
mother,  they  readily  accepted  the  interpretation  of  the 
Seer  Calchas  that  the  dragon  typified  the  Grecian  host, 
and  the  destruction  of  the  birds  guaranteed  the  fall  of 
Troy  in  the  next  nine  years.  Immediately  a  favoring 
wind  sprang  up;  the  many  ships,  so  carefully  catalogued 
by  Homer,  were  filled  with  the  reencouraged  heroes,  and 
in  due  course  the  portent  seen  in  the  branches  of  the 
plane  tree  was  amply  verified. 

Fifteen  hundred  years  later  this  wonderful  tree  was 
still  standing  and  its  vigorous  rootlets  continued  to  drink 
of  the  nourishing  waters  of  the  fountain  of  Aulis,  which 
can,  however,  hardly  be  credited  with  any  part  in  the 
even  more  remarkable  preservation  of  the  tent  of  Aga- 
memnon that  was,  in  the  same  period,  pointed  out  on  the 
slope  of  a  nearby  hill. 

Pausanias;  IX.  19. 


POTNI^ 

Among  the  ruins  of  Potniae,  which  were  ten  stadia  from 
Thebes  and  on  the  other  side  of  the  Asopus  River,  the 
Well  of  Potniae  was  pointed  out  as  a  noxious  object,  for 
any  horse  that  drank  from  it  straightway  went  mad. 


1 84  CENTRAL  GREECE 

One  can  imagine,  too,  that  the  water  was  not  without 
effect  on  the  people  themselves,  and  that  their  town  might 
still  have  been  inhabited  if  they  had  done  away  with  the 
Well  and  sought  for  another  and  more  wholesome  supply. 

They  had  been  noted  for  their  peculiar  ways  and 
strange  actions,  and  it  is  difficult  to  stifle  the  suspicion 
that  it  was  not  horses  only  that  were  made  flighty  by  the 
Well  of  Potniae. 

They  admitted  sucking  pigs  into  their  Halls  and  made 
pets  of  them  which  was  not  considered  any  better  form 
by  Pausanias  in  the  Year  One  than  it  is  in  1921. 

And  once  in  their  worship  of  Dionysus  they  had  killed 
the  Priest — it  was  customary  in  those  days  to  water  the 
wine — an  insane  act  that  brought  upon  them  a  pestilence. 
To  have  the  pestilence  removed,  they  were  obliged  to 
sacrifice  a  grown  boy  for  several  years  annually.  The 
penalty  was,  however,  commuted  at  last  and  they  were 
permitted  to  substitute  a  goat,  a  substitution  that  the  old 
religious  powers  frequently  permitted,  and  that  is  still  in 
effect  in  certain  societies  of  Neologists.  GlaucuS,  the 
father  of  Bellerophon  the  owner  of  the  flying  horse  Pega- 
sus, was  very  fond  of  horses  and  of  chariot  racing,  and 
he  was  eaten  up  by  a  pair  of  his  racers  who  drank  from 
this  Well.  The  incident  formed  the  principal  decorative 
feature  of  one  of  the  most  sensational  shields  of  antiquity ; 
it  was  owned  by  Polinices  who  helped  to  slay  the  dragon 
at  the  Spring  of  Adrastea,  and  represented  Glaucus' 
maddened  steeds  in  a  furious  gallop,  actually  in  lifelike 
motion  on  the  shield.  The  figures  of  the  frantic  horses 
were  attached  to  a  revolving  spindle  set  vertically  in  the 
buckler,  and  the  effect  was  that  of  an  endless  troupe  of 
wild  stallions  issuing  from  the  targe  at  frantic  speed  and 
pawing  furiously  with  their  menacing  hoofs  at  any  enemy 
upon  whom  Glaucus  might  be  rushing.     Possibly  more 


BCEOTIA  185 

may  be  learned  regarding  this  peculiar  Spring  if  ^schy- 
lus'  lost  tragedy  entitled  "Glaucus  of  Potniae"  is  ever 
found.  The  Site  of  Potniae  is  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
village  of  Taki. 

Pausanias;  IX.  8. 


Hercyna 

The  twin  sources  of  the  river  Hercyna  bubbled  up  close 
together  in  a  cave  in  the  Grove  of  Trophonius  near 
Lebadea. 

These  Springs  were  accidentally  uncovered  by  Proser- 
pine who  when  playing  with  her  friend  Hercyna  chased  a 
goose  into  the  cave,  and,  lifting  a  stone  in  her  search, 
made  an  outlet  for  the  fountains. 

The  oracle  of  Trophonius  was  on  the  side  of  Mt.  Heli- 
con above  the  grove. 

Conducted  under  the  name  of  a  robber  and  murderer, 
and  with  torturing  ceremonies,  this  oracle  which  was 
unknown  one  day  became  a  short  time  thereafter  the 
second  most  noted  of  some  three  hundred  semi-private 
oracles  that  Greece  is  said  to  have  supported. 

Trophonius  and  his  brother  Agamedes  were  builders 
and  constructed  a  treasury  for  Hyrieus,  one  of  the  richest 
men  of  the  vicinity.  In  the  walls  they  wickedly  left  a 
cunningly  fitted  loose  stone  that  gave  them  secret  access 
to  the  treasures,  and  their  depredations  were  so  great  that 
the  diminution  of  the  vast  hoard  was  finally  noticed; 
then  a  trap  was  set  and  Agamedes  was  caught,  and  held 
so  securely  that  he  could  only  get  his  head  through  the 
opening. 

Finding  it  impossible  to  pull  him  through,  Trophonius, 


1 86  CENTRAL  GREECE 

to  prevent  identification  and  to  save  himself  from  sus- 
picion, cut  off  his  brother's  head  and  was  then  swal- 
lowed up  by  the  earth  in  the  grove  of  Lebadea,  and 
the  cavity  was  marked  with  a  pillar  and  called  after 
Agamedes. 

A  similar  story,  softened,  however,  with  a  love  passage, 
was  told  by  the  Egyptians  in  connection  with  a  treasury 
that  was  constructed  for  King  Rhampsinitus  some  1200 
years  B.C. 

Occurrences  in  the  cave  of  the  Witch  of  Endor  must 
have  been  quite  enjoyable  in  comparison  with  what  those 
who  consulted  the  oracle  of  Trophonius  had  to  endure. 
It  was  said  that  no  visitor  ever  laughed  mirthfully  after 
one  session  in  the  oracle's  hole  of  horrors. 

One  might  imagine  that  the  proceedings,  in  part  at 
least,  were  suggested  by  the  terrors  of  Agamedes  while  the 
trap  was  lacerating  his  legs  and  Trophonius'  sword  was 
hacking  his  head  off. 

A  person  contemplating  a  consultation  had  to  take  up 
temporary  residence  in  a  near-by  temple  and  follow  pre- 
scribed sacrifices  and  invocations.  He  practically  went 
into  training,  bathing  regularly  in  the  cold  river,  and 
eating  plenty  of  animal  food  until  the  night  appointed  for 
his  descent  into  the  cave,  when  he  was  anointed  with  oil 
by  two  thirteen-year-old  boys,  and  offered  a  final  invoca- 
tion to  Agamedes. 

After  drinking,  first  the  water  of  forgetfulness,  and 
then  the  water  of  memory,  possibly  that  furnished  by  the 
twin  Springs,  he  proceeded  up  the  mountain  to  a  stepless 
cavity  into  which  he  descended  by  a  small  ladder  until  he 
reached  a  narrow  opening  to  another  cavity.  Having 
thrust  his  legs  to  the  knees  into  this  second  opening, 
his  well-oiled  body  was  sucked,  as  a  swimmer  is  sucked 
through  a  whirlpool,  into  an  underground  chamber  where 


BCEOTIA  187 

the  future  was  made  known  to  him,  sometimes  through 
the  eyes,  and  sometimes  through  the  ears. 

He  was  then  ejected,  feet  first,  and,  while  still  in  a  state 
of  terror,  and  hardly  knowing  where  he  was,  the  priests 
required  him  to  rehearse  his  uncanny  adventures  and 
describe  all  that  he  had  seen  or  heard. 

Afterwards  he  was  required  to  recall  his  ordeal  again 
and  to  write  down  an  account  of  all  that  had  happened  to 
him. 

It  is  said  that  only  one  man  failed  to  come  out  at  least 
alive,  and  that  when  it  was  all  over  the  victims  laughed; 
but  one  can  fancy  that  a  conception  of  that  laugh  might 
only  be  gained  by  watching  the  mirth  of  a  maniac. 

Lebadea,  its  name  slightly  changed  to  Livadhia,  is  still 
a  considerable  town,  and  some  copious  Springs  at  the 
eastern  side  of  a  hill  near  the  southern  end  of  the  town  are 
taken  to  be  the  ancient  twin  sources. 

They  do  not  issue  from  the  old  cavern  near-by,  but  from 
openings  outside  having,  perhaps,  been  again  blocked  up 
in  the  cave  as  they  were  before  Proserpine  first  uncovered 
them.  They  now  rise  at  the  sides  of  the  river;  those  on 
the  right,  warm  and  unfit  to  drink,  are  called  Chilia  and 
may  have  caused  the  stupor  of  f orgetfulness ;  those  on  the 
left,  cold  and  clear,  are  called  Krya. 

Pausanias;  IX.  39. 


TiLPHUSA 

•> 

The  fountain  of  Tilphusa  was  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Til- 
phusium  about  fifty  stadia  from  Haliartus ;  the  mountain 
is  now  called  Petra;  and  the  town,  Mazi. 

The  Tilphusa  of  the  fountain  was  a  river  n3miph,  and 


1 88  CENTRAL  GREECE 

not  the  notorious  Tilphusa  the  mother  of  Ares'  serpent- 
son,  the  dragon  that  Cadmus  killed. 

Pindar  described  the  water  as  ambrosial,  and  declared 
that  its  taste  was  as  sweet  as  fresh  honey. 

This  Spring  caused  the  death,  and  marks  the  site  of  the 
grave  of  Tiresias,  one  of  the  most  famous  of  the  old  Gre- 
cian Seers,  who  lived  some  1200  years  before  the  Christian 
era.  He  was  a  Theban,  a  direct  descendant  of  Udaeus, 
one  of  the  men  who  sprang  from  the  serpent's  teeth 
sown  by  Cadmus. 

Like  Caeneus,  the  daughter  of  Elatus,  he  was  born  a 
girl ;  but  at  the  age  of  seven  was  changed  by  Apollo  into 
a  boy ;  thereafter,  he  was  several  times  changed  from  one 
sex  to  the  other,  his  final  sex  being  feminine ;  and  was  once 
transformed  into  a  mouse,  which,  perhaps,  led  naturally 
to  his  formulation  of  the  doctrine  that  even  the  stars  had 
souls  and  were  of  different  sexes. 

Having  had  the  experiences  of  both  sexes,  he  was  called 
upon  to  proclaim  whether  the  male  or  the  female  obtained 
the  more  enjoyment  from  the  pleasures  of  the  affections, 
and,  having  answered  with  mathematical  precision,  that 
of  their  ten  phases  all  of  them  were  enjoyed  by  women, 
and  nine  of  them  were  unknown  to  men,  he  was  stricken 
with  blindness  by  Juno  for  his  garrulity. 

It  has  been  explained  that,  as  the  medicine  men  of 
some  tribes  of  Indians  as  far  apart  as  Patagonia  and  the 
Alaskan  islands,  dress  like  women,  Tiresias,  perhaps,  at 
times,  appeared  in  female  apparel,  which  gave  rise  to  the 
belief  that  he  had  changed  his  sex — but  no  one  has  yet 
offered  any  theory  to  account  for  his  transformation  into 
a  mouse,  though  the  power  of  foretelling  disaster  that 
members  of  the  Mouse  family  have  long  possessed  is  thus 
easily  accounted  for,  as  being  inherited  from  the  strain 
of  Tiresias'  blood  that  came  into  the  breed  at  the  time  in 


BCEOTIA  189 

question;  during  which  no  doubt  he  deserted  any  ship 
that  was  about  to  founder  on  its  next  voyage,  and  moved 
from  any  building  that  was  shortly  to  be  consumed  by 
fire. 

The  power,  at  any  rate,  was  transferred  and  persisted 
in  his  own  human  family,  for  not  only  was  his  daughter, 
Manto  or  Daphne,  gifted  with  prophetic  powers  equal 
to  his  own,  but  even  his  grandson,  Mopsus,  inherited  the 
gift,  and  had  such  a  reputation  that  Calchas  died  of 
vexation  on  finding  that  Mopsus  was  a  better  soothsayer 
than  himself. 

There  was  a  Tiresias  oracle  at  Orchomenus  twenty 
generations  after  his  unhappy  demise,  and,  for  all  that  is 
said  to  the  contrary,  it  may  have  been  in  charge  of  some 
descendant  in  whose  veins  the  strain  of  prophecy  still 
persisted. 

At  the  capture  of  Thebes  by  the  sons  of  Polynices  and 
the  Argives,  Tiresias  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victors,  and 
while  being  taken,  with  the  spoil,  to  the  temple  at  Delphi, 
he  stopped  on  the  way  at  this  Spring  to  quench  his  thirst, 
and  took  a  hearty  drink.  Being  a  very  old  man  who  had, 
according  to  some  accounts,  outlived  seven  or  more 
generations,  the  coldness  of  the  water,  in  his  heated  condi- 
tion, proved  more  than  his  lowered  vitality  could  bear, 
and  he  was  at  once  buried  near  the  Spring. 

Homer  says  that  Tiresias  was  the  only  inhabitant  of 
the  realm  of  the  dead  whom  Proserpine  permitted  to 
retain  intelligence,  but,  judging  from  his  powers,  as  evi- 
denced in  his  lack  of  foresight  of  his  personal  misfortunes, 
this  boon  possibly  raised  him  very  slightly  above  the 
condition  of  his  fellow  phantoms. 

He  predicted  the  fate  of  Narcissus  which  overtook  him 
after  drinking  of  the  water  of  the  Fountain  of  Donacon, 
and  some  may  regard  his  own  end  as  a  judgment  upon 


I90  CENTRAL  GREECE 

him  for  that  death;  but  he,  himself,  was  taken  prisoner 
at  Thebes,  and  became  bHnd  at  one  Spring  (Hippocrene) , 
and  died  at  another,  at  least  two  of  which  misfortunes 
any  but  the  most  oblivious  of  Seers  might  have  been 
expected  to  be  able  to  guard  himself  against.  It  is  true 
he  admitted  he  was  subject  to  lapses  into  forgetfulness, 
and  it  was  doubtless  owing  to  reflective  persons  not  tak- 
ing such  lapses  into  consideration  that  there  gradually 
grew  up  a  loss  of  faith  in  Prophets  among  the  ancients, 
although  as  long  as  wishes  have  the  progeny  commonly 
attributed  to  them  there  will  be  people  who,  wanting  to 
know  about  their  future,  will  believe  there  is  some  one 
who  can  supply  the  information,  and  will  accept,  as  a 
Seer,  whosoever  may  present  himself  with  the  proper 
persuasion. 

Strabo;  IX.  2.    §  27.  Pausanias;  IX.  33. 


Amphiaraus 

(Fountain  and  Well) 

The  experiences  of  Amphiaraus  and  Tiresias  were  simi- 
lar in  several  respects;  they  were  both  Seers  of  renown, 
and  they  lived,  in  different  ages,  at  Thebes,  and  both  of 
them  came  to  their  deaths  while  leaving  Theban  battle- 
fields. 

Tiresias  died  at  the  Spring  of  Tilphusa ;  and  Amphiar- 
aus became  a  god  by  the  fountain  where  his  temple  was 
built,  twelve  stadia  from  Oropus. 

Like  another  prophet,  Amphiaraus  departed  from  life 
in  a  chariot — the  Grecian  Seer's  conveyance,  however, 
went  down  and  not  up,  and  disappeared  in  the  earth  with 
him  and  his  driver,  Bato,  it  is  said,  at  some  distance  from 


BGEOTIA  191 

this  fountain,  between  Thebes  and  Chalcis  at  a  place 
called  Harma,  meaning  chariot. 

The  exact  spot  where  the  chariot  dropped  out  of  sight 
was  afterwards  surrounded  with  pillars  and  enclosed,  and 
the  place  had  an  awesome  atmosphere  that  even  deterred 
birds  from  profaning  the  pillars  by  perching  on  them,  and 
kept  the  cows  from  cropping  the  sacred  grass  that  grew 
around  them. 

The  fountain  by  the  temple  was  reserved  for  a  peculiar 
purpose;  no  sacrifices  were  made  at  it,  and  its  water  was 
not  used,  either  for  lustrations  or  for  the  washing  of 
hands;  it  was,  in  effect,  made  use  of  only  as  a  collection 
box. 

The  oracle  in  the  temple  was  of  a  semi-private  charac- 
ter, like  that  of  Trophonius,  neither  of  which  ranked  as 
high  as  those  that  were  presided  over  by  the  gods  by 
birth,  and  the  consultants  usually  furnished  their  own 
replies,  which,  if  necessary,  the  oracle  would  interpret  in 
hexameters,  and  such  as  came  true  were  preserved  as 
testimonials. 

Amphiaraus'  reputation  as  a  Seer  during  his  life  was 
made  in  divinations  by  dreams,  and  his  system  was  con- 
tinued in  the  temple,  where  it  was  customary  for  the  con- 
sultant to  sacrifice  to  Amphiaraus,  and  then  to  a  number 
of  the  gods  whose  names  were  rostered  on  the  altar. 
Then  he  killed  a  ram  and  skinned  it,  and,  wrapping  him- 
self in  the  warm  pelt,  went  to  sleep  and  dreamed  the 
answer  to  his  own  inquiry. 

Under  such  conditions  oracular  liability  was  reduced 
to  its  lowest  terms,  and  no  dreamer  could  in  fairness 
blame  anyone  but  himself  if  the  outcome  of  his  affair 
was  not  to  his  satisfaction. 

The  temple  oracle  also  conducted  a  department  of 
health,  and  it  was  in  this  branch  of  the  ceremonies  that 


192  CENTRAL  GREECE 

the  fountain  was  made  use  of,  for  all  patients  who  were 
cured  were  expected  to  throw  into  the  Spring  some  gold 
or  silver  coin  according  to  their  wealth  or  their  grateful- 
ness. 

The  practice  of  making  collections  at  Oropus  was  still 
in  vogue  late  in  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century,  and  an 
international  complication  arose  because,  for  the  ancient 
and  satisfactory  method  of  employing  the  Spring,  a  more 
strenuous  one  was  substituted  on  April  ii,  1870,  when 
Lord  and  Lady  Muncaster  and  a  party  of  English  trav- 
elers were  seized  at  Oropus  by  brigands  who  attempted 
to  collect  a  ransom  of  £25,000,  and,  failing,  killed  five 
of  the  party. 

The  boundary  of  the  territorj''  of  Oropus  caused  fre- 
quent contentions  between  Attica  and  Boeotia,  and 
brought  out  Carneades*  famous  oration  on  Justice  in 
which  he  contended  it  was  purely  an  artificial  idea  for 
purposes  of  expediency,  based  on  either  sensation  or 
reasoning  which  are  rarely  alike  in  any  aggregation  of 
people. 

Pausanias  ays; — "I  have  seen  also  the  Well  of  Am- 
phiaraus,  and  the  Alcyonian  marsh,"  which  latter  he 
describes  as  a  sort  of  quicksand  a  third  of  a  stade  in  ex- 
tent and  so  deep  that  Nero's  engineers  were  unable  to 
plumb  its  depth.  He  adds  that  he  was  not  permitted  to 
describe  the  nightly  rites  that  took  place  near  it  annually, 
and,  though,  no  more  is  said  about  the  Well  than  if  the 
prohibition  had  extended  to  that  also,  it  has  been  as- 
sumed that  the  location  of  the  Well  was  near  the  Spring 
of  Amymone. 

The  modern  village  of  Oropo  is  within  two  miles  of  the 
sea  and  on  the  river  Vourieni,  the  Asopus  of  Amphiaraus* 
times. 

Pausanias;  I.  34.     II.  37. 


BCEOTIA  193 

140 

Hysi^ 

Near  Mt.  Cithaeron  the  highroad  between  Eleutherae 
and  Platasa  passed  on  its  right  side  the  ruins  of  the  former 
city  of  Hysiae. 

The  ruins  told  one  of  those  tales  in  which  the  life  of  a 
city  appears,  in  all  but  its  longer  span,  much  the  same  as 
the  life  of  a  man.  They  told  of  blasted  hopes,  of  plans 
and  preparations  for  the  future  that  the  city  never  lived 
to  carry  out;  for  among  the  remains  there  were  seen 
not  only  half-ruined  buildings,  but  buildings  only  half- 
completed. 

This  similarity  between  the  existence  of  towns  and 
their  tenants  is  strikingly  shown  in  the  history  of  many 
modern  places  that,  instead  of  passing  away  in  dry  rot 
where  they  first  appeared,  actually  migrate  when  their 
surroundings  become  uncongenial,  and  continue  exist- 
ence in  new  localities  where  better  opportunities  are 
presented  for  a  healthy  and  active  life. 

Nowadays  a  number  of  such  migrations  occur  every 
year  in  the  western  part  of  the  United  States,  and  in  the 
most  up-to-date  manner;  for,  an  ambitious  town,  rather 
than  become  extinct  when  its  mines  or  oil  wells  cease  to 
be  productive,  bravely  shakes  the  dust  from  its  founda- 
tions, and  all  the  stores  and  houses,  mounting  as  many 
motor  tractors  as  each  may  require,  travel  quickly  and 
safely  to  the  new  site  chosen,  which  is  sometimes  as  many 
as  twenty-five  miles  away. 

Before  the  first  half  of  the  year  191 7  was  completed, 
such  journeys  had  been  performed  by  the  American 
towns  of; — Bottsford,  Cornish,  Healdton,  Hewitt,  Staun- 
ton and  Walters. 

Evidently  there  were  good  people  in  the  city  of  Hysiae, 

13 


194  CENTRAL  GREECE 

for  one  of  the  buildings  in  process  of  construction  when 
the  city's  life  came  to  an  end,  was  a  temple  of  Apollo; 
and  among  the  crumbling  stones  and  sagging  columns  was 
a  holy  well  which  though  still  flowing  had  in  its  old  age 
lost  some  of  the  power  of  its  youth  and  could  no  longer, 
as  formerly,  cause  whoever  drank  of  it  to  prophesy. 

Between  the  highroad  and  the  town  stood  the  tomb  of 
Mardonius  who  tried  to  spoil  the  Spring  of  Gargaphia 
that  Diana  made  famous. 

That  tomb,  for  a  foreign  invader,  was  another  evidence 
of  the  magnanimity  of  the  Greeks  at  a  certain  period, 
when,  with  a  fine  sympathy  for  the  feelings  of  vanquished 
foes,  they  refrained  from  erecting  monimients  to  com- 
memorate their  own  victories  in  battle. 

Near  where  the  road  between  Thebes  and  Athens  now 
skirts  the  mountain,  there  are  some  ruins  of  walls  and  a 
partly  filled  Well  which  are  supposed  to  be  the  identical 
stones,  and  perhaps  the  holy  Well  that  were  noted  by 
Pausanias. 

Pausanias;  IX.  2. 


The  Monads'  Springs 

The  remarkable  Springs  that  the  Maenads  made  in. 
Boeotia  as  the  agents  of  Bacchus  were  in  the  foothill 
forests  of  Mt.  Cithaeron  and  are  described  in  The  Bac- 
chantes. 

That  tragedy  is  one  of  the  most  gruesome  and  un- 
pleasant of  Euripides'  plays.  Set  in  the  time  of  the  old 
age  of  Cadmus,  the  founder  of  Thebes,  when  he  had  re- 
signed the  rulership  to  Pentheus,  the  son  of  his  daughter 
Agave,  the  drama  opens  with  Bacchus'  return  from  his 


'~  BCEOTIA  195 

trip  made  to  India  to  introduce  the  vine  and  exploit  the 
pleasures  of  wine  drinking.  The  god  is  incensed  on  dis- 
covering that  with  the  exception  of  Cadmus  and  Tire- 
sias  everyone  has  lost  faith  in  his  divine  origin  and  that 
no  one  in  the  town  believes  in  his  descent  from  Zeus. 
To  punish  the  people  for  thus  disavowing  his  deityhood, 
he  inflicts  all  the  women  with  a  madness  that  impels 
them  to  leave  their  homes  and  take  to  the  woods  of  Mt. 
Cithaeron  where  they  wander  wildly  about  with  Bacchic 
insignia  and  in  Bacchanal  costume,  hides  of  dappled 
fawn  skins  girdled  with  snakes,  petting  and  suckling  the 
whelps  of  wolves  less  savage  than  themselves.  ; 

When  one  of  these  Msenads  needed  nourishment,  she 
struck  her  thyrsus  into  the  earth,  and  forth  there  gushed 
a  limpid  Spring  of  water,  or,  if  she  craved  a  stronger  drink 
the  god  sent  up  a  stream  of  wine  in  place  of  water.  Such 
of  the  women  as  wished  for  a  draught  of  milk  had  but  to 
scratch  the  soil  with  their  finger-tips,  and  there  they  had 
milk  in  abundance. 

The  frenzied  Masnads  spent  the  days  in  orgies  of  crimi- 
nal acts;  carrying  off  the  children  of  the  country  people 
and  chasing  and  wounding  their  parents;  and  in  killing 
the  cattle  which  the  fury  and  strength  of  insanity  enabled 
them  to  tear  to  pieces  with  their  hands  alone. 

After  such  a  strenuous  and  gory  day's  work  they  ran 
back  to  the  marvelous  Springs,  and  at  the  water  fountains 
they  bathed  away  their  covering  of  blood,  assisted  by 
the  tongues  of  their  serpent  girdles  which  dissolved  the 
hardened  gore  and  cleaned  away  the  gouts  and  licked 
them  dry. 

Pentheus,  insanified  by  Bacchus,  dressed  himself  in 
the  Bacchanal  costimie  and  climbed  a  tree  to  observe 
the  wicked  doings  of  the  women,  who,  in  their  delirium, 
took  him  for  a  lion,  and,  led  by  Agave  his  own  mother. 


196  CENTRAL  GREECE 

they  surrounded  the  tree  and  with  a  thousand  hands  tore 
it  out  of  the  ground  and  then,  with  foaming  mouths  and 
wildly  rolling  eyes,  they  planted  their  feet  upon  his  body 
and  pulled  off  his  legs  and  arms;  and  ripping  the  flesh 
from  the  bones  with  their  rending  nails  they  scattered  it 
about  in  little  pieces,  of  which  Cadmus  afterwards  col- 
lected as  many  as  could  be  seen. 

Transfixing  the  head  on  the  point  of  a  thyrsus,  they 
carried  it  in  a  riotous  procession  to  Thebes  where  Bacchus, 
his  vengeance  being  satisfied,  restored  them  to  their 
proper  senses  and  led  them  to  a  mournful  appreciation 
of  the  punishments  the  gods  can  inflict  upon  mortals 
who  ignore  and  disown  them. 

Unlike  the  Spring  at  Cyparissiae  in  Messenia  which 
Bacchus  produced  with  his  thyrsus,  and  which  still  re- 
mains to  testify  to  the  miracle,  none  of  the  Milk  and  Wine 
fountains  of  the  Maenads  is  now  to  be  found  in  Boeotia, 
and  it  is  therefore  left  to  individual  fancy  to  decide 
whether  the  Springs  dried  up  when  the  occasion  for  their 
use  had  passed,  or  whether  they  were  as  imaginary  as  the 
lion  the  women  thought  they  saw  in  Pentheus. 

Euripides;  "Bacchantes,"  line  690. 


142 

Well  of  Dirce 

In  Mt.  Cithaeron,  on  the  borders  of  Attica,  there  was  a 
Well  called  The  Well  of  Dirce  by  those  who,  elaborating 
the  Boeotian  account  of  the  end  of  that  jealous  woman, 
professed  to  believe  that  it  was  so  named  either  because 
Amphion  and  Zethus  had  thrown  Dirce's  body  into  that 
Well,  or,  because  Dionysus  had  transformed  her  into  it 
after  the  punishment  by  which  the  sons  of  Antiope  de- 


BCEOTIA  197 

prived  Dirce  of  life,  as  stated  in  the  account  of  the 
fountain  of  Dirce.     (No.  130.) 

Hyginus;  Fable  7. 
Apollodorus;  III.  s-    §  S- 


Fountain  of  Cith^ron 

Athenaeus  mentions  a  fountain  of  Cithaeron,  near  which 
there  was  a  temple  of  Jupiter,  as  an  instance  of  waters  which 
change  their  natures  by  reason  of  falling  thunderbolts. 
■  Apparently  this  fountain's  change  was  from  bitter  to 
sweet. 

Athenasus;  II.  15. 

144 

Plat^a 

There  was  a  Spring,  Pausanias  says,  on  the  right  hand 
of  the  way  from  Megara  towards  Plataea;  and,  a  little 
farther  on,  a  rock  called  The  Bed  of  Acteon  because  he 
used  to  sleep  on  it  when  tired  with  hunting:  and  it  was 
in  that  Spring,  Pausanias  adds,  that  Actason  saw  Artemis 
bathing. 

This  is  a  somewhat  sketchy  description,  if  it  refers  to 
the  Spring  in  the  valley  of  Gargaphia,  of  what,  fortu- 
nately, there  is  another  more  enlightening  account  as 
may  be  read  in  No.  145. 

Pausanias;  IX.  2. 


Fountain  of  Gargaphia 

This  Spring  was  near  the  city  of  Plataea,  in  the  western 
part  of  Boeotia,  about  six  and  a  half  miles  from  Thebes, 


198  CENTRAL  GREECE 

and  some  ruins  of  it  are  still  visible  near  the  village  of 
Kokhla. 

It  was  in  the  beautiful  valley  of  Gargaphie,  or  Gar- 
gaphia,  "thick  set  and  shaded  with  pitch  trees,  and  the 
sharp  pointed  cypress. 

"  In  the  extreme  recess  of  this  valley,  which  was  sacred 
to  Diana,  there  was  a  grotto  in  a  grove  where  nature  had 
formed  an  arch  in  the  native  pumice  and  the  light  sand- 
stone ;  from  this  a  limpid  fountain  ran  murmuring  through 
a  spreading  channel  edged  with  a  border  of  grass. 

"Here,  in  the  grotto,  it  was  the  delight  of  Diana,  the 
Goddess  of  the  woods,  to  bathe  in  the  clear  water,  and 
rest  herself  when  wearied  with  the  efforts  of  the  chase;" 
and  as  she  was  so  engaged  one  day  Actaeon,  the  grandson 
of  Cadmus,  wandering  through  the  valley,  found  his  way 
by  chance  into  the  cave,  and  surprised  the  goddess  in  her 
bath.  Indignant  at  what  she  thought  his  curiosity,  she 
threw  a  double  handful  of  water  over  him  and  cried; 
"Now  thou  mayst  tell,  if  tell  thou  canst,  how  that  I  was 
seen  by  thee  without  my  garments,"  and  at  once  he 
became  a  lively  stag  and  dashed  from  the  springside 
through  the  valley,  pursued  by  his  own  hunting  pack  of 
fifty  dogs  who,  overtaking  him,  unknowingly  tore  him  to 
pieces  and  then  died  of  grief  for  their  missing  master, 
while  his  sorrowing  and  disconsolate  mother  wandered 
mournfully  through  the  glades,  gathering  in  her  bosom 
the  gnawed  and  crunched  bones  of  her  son's  dismembered 
frame. 

Juno  is  said  to  have  stated  that  Diana  resorted  to  this 
extreme  measure  in  order  to  silence  a  witness  of  a  con- 
cealed deformity. 

Unfortunately,  Juno  did  not  account  for  the  numerous 
other  deaths  Diana  caused  or  attempted — through  snakes 
introduced  into  Admetus'  bed ;  and  through  the  boars  that 


BCEOTIA  199 

killed  Adonis  and  the  Calydonian  people;  and  directly, 
by  slaying  Niobe's  children;  and  Cenchrias,  and  many 
others  before  she  was  finally,  and  not  inappropriately^ 
changed  into  a  cat. 

Of  the  fifty  hounds  in  Actason's  pack,  not  only  was  the 
name  of  each  dog  preserved,  but  some  special  piece  of 
information  was  given  regarding  many  of  them  indi- 
vidually, and  thirty-six  of  these  little  canine  biogra- 
phies are  still  extant. 

The  grief  of  the  dogs  when  the  tragedy  was  over,  makes 
quite  plausible  and  pleasing  the  statement  that  they  were 
afflicted  with  sudden  and  temporary  madness. 

And  yet  the  minute  and  substantiating  particulars  with 
which  the  sorrowful  story  of  Actason  is  told  have  not 
deterred  the  incredulous  from  trying  to  pull  the  narra- 
tion to  pieces  and  give  the  impression  that  it  is  only  an 
involved  method  of  relating  the  victim's  ruin,  through 
the  expense  of  keeping  up  a  large  hunting  establishment. 

The  fountain  of  Gargaphia,  many  years  afterwards, 
came  again  into  public  notice  through  another  instance 
of  bad  temper  and  revenge,  when  Mardonius  and  the 
Persian  cavalry  fouled  its  waters  because  the  Greek  army 
they  were  fighting  drank  from  it. 

The  effects  in  the  latter  case,  however,  were  but  tem- 
porary, for  the  Platasans  were  able  to  make  the  waters 
pure  again. 

Of  all  the  Boeotian  leaders  who  went  to  the  Trojan 
war,  only  one  returned;  his  name  was  Leitus,  and  his 
tomb  was  near  this  fountain. 

The  Platseans  had  pleasant  as  well  as  painful  memories, 
and  annually  celebrated  a  festival  of  fun  to  keep  their 
recollections  fresh.  They  had  in  the  tOA^m  a  statue  of 
Hera  which  was  carved  in  Pentelican  marble  by  Praxit- 
eles, and  was  made  as  the  outcome  of  a  charming  comedy 


200  CENTRAL  GREECE 

arranged  by  Cithseron,  a  ruler  of  Platasa,  whose  reputa- 
tion for  ingenuity  was  so  great  that  once  when  Hera  in 
a  matrimonial  huff  had  separated  from  Zeus,  the  latter 
called  Cithasron  in  consultation  and  at  his  suggestion 
made  a  wooden  image  of  a  woman,  and,  dressing  it  up  in 
bridal  finery,  placed  it  in  a  wagon  drawn  by  gaily  deco- 
rated oxen. 

Hera,  hearing  that  her  spouse  was  about  to  take 
another  wife,  hastened  to  the  scene  and,  proceeding  in 
jealous  rage  to  shred  the  garments  of  her  supposed  rival, 
was  so  delighted  with  the  trick  she  discovered  that  an 
immediate  reconciliation  followed. 

It  was  this  comedy  that  was  acted  over  again  every 
year  in  a  procession  reproducing  the  story  in  its  minutest 
particulars ;  and  it  was  followed  by  general  merry-making 
that  no  doubt  led  to  a  better  understanding  in  many 
mortal  households  of  Platsea. 

Ovid;  Meta.  III.    Fable  3- 


146 

Asopus 

The  principal  source  of  the  Asopus  flowed  from  several 
Springs  near  Platasa  at  a  place  now  called  Kriakuki  where 
beside  the  Springs  there  are  two  trees  and  a  Well. 

The  Platseans  were  the  original  inhabitants  of  the  land 
and  got  their  name  from  a  daughter  of  the  river  god 
Asopus. 

This  Spring  was  made  memorable  by  the  battle  of 
B.C.  479,  which  was  fought  on  the  banks  of  its  stream  and 
which  freed  the  Grecians  of  the  last  of  the  horde  of  more 
than  five  million  Persians  and  allies  that  Xerxes  had 
brought  against  them. 


BCEOTIA  201 

Of  300,000  Persians  commanded  by  Mardonius  in  this 
battle,  257,000  were  killed;  while  but  159  of  110,000  of 
the  Greeks  lost  their  lives  under  the  skillful  leadership 
of  Pausanias  the  uncle  of  Thermopylae's  hero  Leonidas. 

The  valor  and  determination  of  the  Greeks  on  this 
occasion  is  indicated  in  the  conduct  of  the  Athenian 
Sophanes  who  carried  an  anchor  chained  to  his  girdle 
and  moored  himself  from  time  to  time  so  that  he  might 
stand  against  the  onrushing  forces  as  immovably  as  a 
ship  outriding  a  gale-driven  sea. 

Smith's  Die.  of  Gk.  and  Ro.  Geo.     "Asopus.'^ 


CiSSUSA 

One  would  not  be  disappointed  if  expecting  some  un- 
usual characteristic  in  the  Spring  near  which  Bacchus 
was  born  and  at  which  he  received  his  initial  bath. 

The  statement  that  he  first  saw  the  light  at  Nysa  led 
later  to  some  confusion  about  the  location  of  his  birth- 
place, for  Nysa  was  a  name  found  in  other  parts  of  Greece, 
in  neighboring  islands,  and  also  in  India  and  in  Africa. 

The  Boeotians,  however,  calmly  ignored  all  places 
except  their  own  Nysa,  a  village  on  Mt.  Helicon. 

The  traditions  about  his  birth  might  be  condensed  in 
a  statement  as  startling  as  Shakespeare's  assertion  that 
cowards  die  many  times.  The  relation  that  he  was  born 
prematurely  and  sewed  up  in  Zeus'  thigh  until  nine 
months  had  elapsed  was  supplemented  by  an  even  more 
astonishing  account  of  a  third  and  earlier  birth,  as  son  of 
Zeus  and  Proserpine,  under  which  parentage  he  was  also 
called  lacchus.  During  that  existence,  he  was  captured 
by  the  Titans  who,  after  separating  his  members,  pro- 


202  CENTRAL  GREECE 

ceeded  to  make  a  stew  with  the  pieces;  the  cookery's 
odor,  however,  attracted  the  attention  of  Zeus  who  on 
investigation  readily  recognized  the  parts  of  his  son's 
form  that  were  simmering  in  the  Titans'  pot,  and  he  in- 
continently annihilated  the  cooks  with  lightning,  rescued 
the  pieces,  and  had  them  interred  on  the  slopes  of  Mt. 
Parnassus — that  is,  all  except  the  heart  which  was  re- 
duced to  powder  and  eaten  by  Semele,  whose  son  born  a 
few  months  afterwards  was  therefore  said  to  be  really 
the  reincarnation  of  the  original  and  partly  stewed 
Bacchus. 

The  earliest  attendants  of  this  Boeotian  born  Bacchus 
were  the  ill-fated  Ino  and  Athamas  and  they  bathed  the 
infant  god  at  the  Spring  of  Cissusa,  the  water  of  which 
was  appropriately  and  prophetically  of  a  bright  wine 
color,  clear  and  most  pleasant  to  drink. 

A  Cretan  plant,  the  storax,  grew  by  the  Spring,  and 
near  it  was  the  monument  of  Alcmena,  Bacchus'  grand- 
mother, and  the  sepulcher  of  Rhadamanthus  whom  she 
married  after  the  demise  of  the  god's  grandfather  Am- 
phitryon. 

Zeus'  wife  Hera  in  jealous  and  unreasoning  anger 
inflicted  innocent  Ino  and  Athamas  with  madness,  during, 
which  Ino,  who  had  perhaps  pondered  and  brooded  over 
the  occupation  of  the  Titans  which  Zeus  had  interrupted, 
treated  her  own  son  Melicertes  in  a  cauldron  of  boiling 
water,  and  then  clasping  the  bones  to  her  breast  threw 
herself  into  the  sea. 

Athamas  after  wandering  from  place  to  place  finally 
settled  down  in  the  territory,  between  Epirus  and  Thes- 
saly,  which,  known  as  Athamania,  perpetuated  both  his 
name  and  his  madness. 

The  tender  infant,  Bacchus,  was  then  transferred  to 
the  care  of  the  nymphs  of  Mt.  Nysa  in  Asia  where  they 


"-:-"  BOEOTIA  203 

brought  him  up  as  a  girl,  and  their  maidenly  ministrations 
were  rewarded  by  Zeus  with  a  permanent  and  prominent 
position  in  the  sky  where  they  are  still  nightly  in  evidence 
as  the  star  cluster  called  the  Hyades. 

What  effect,  if  any,  the  wine-hued  water  of  the  fountain 
of  Cissusa  had  upon  Bacchus'  career  may  be  left  to  in- 
dividual conjecture,  but  the  chief  occupation  of  his 
after  life  was  to  show  mankind  how  to  cultivate  the 
grape  and  make  use  of  its  juices,  which  were  called 
The  Fruit  of  Bacchus;  and  his  relaxations  were  spent 
in  revelries  that  owed  all  of  their  hilarity  to  the  effects 
of  wine. 

His  festivals,  the  Dionysia,  became  general  holidays, 
and  the  one  that  occurred  when  the  grapes  had  been 
gathered  and  the  must  had  been  fermented,  not  only 
coincided  closely  in  date,  December  19th  to  the  22d, 
with  the  November  Thanksgiving  Day  of  America,  but 
also  partook  of  its  partly  solemn  and  partly  grotesque 
features.  It  had  a  religious  phase  of  thanksgiving,  for  the 
vintage,  but  it  made  its  principal  appeal  as  a  day  of  feast- 
ing, song  and  dancing;  of  rollicking  parades  and  proces- 
sions; and  of  mummeries  for  which  the  participants 
dressed  in  odd  and  fantastic  costimies,  and  in  which  the 
children  all  took  a  prominent  part. 

Even  Plato  conceded  that  during  these  festivals  the 
bounds  of  sobriety  might  allowably  be  overstepped.  But 
with  the  growth  and  spread  of  the  celebrations  debauch- 
ery and  even  crime  were  added  to  what  may  at  first  have 
been  merely  convivial  tipplings  that  Plato  could  coun- 
tenance, and  it  became  necessary  to  enact  numerous 
repressive  measures,  from  time  to  time,  and  finally  to 
suppress  the  festivals  completely. 

This  Spring  is  mentioned  as  a  halting  place  of  the 
Theban  soldiers  in  395  B.C.  when  on  their  way  to  bar 


204  CENTRAL  GREECE 

Lysander  in  an  assault  on  Haliartus,  near  whose  gate  he 
lost  his  life.  Described  as  being  at  the  rear  of  the  enemy, 
it  is  assumed  to  have  been  a  short  distance  north  of  the 
city's  walls  where  a  row  of  Springs  a  few  miles  apart 
makes  it  difficult  to  give  each  one  its  proper  ancient 
designation;  indeed,  even  in  Plutarch's  time  writers 
differed  in  naming  them. 

Apollodorus;  III.  4.    §  3. 
Plutarch;  "Lysander.^; 


148 
LOPHIS 

The  river  Lophis  flowed  through  the  district  of  Hali- 
artus. 

There  is  a  tradition  that  the  ground  was  dry  there 
originally  and  had  no  water  in  it,  and  that  one  of  the 
rulers  went  to  Delphi  to  inquire  of  the  god  how  they 
might  obtain  water  in  the  district ;  the  Pythian  priestess 
enjoined  him  to  slay  the  first  person  he  should  meet  on 
his  return.  By  a  lamentable  chance  that  person  happened 
to  be  his  son  Lophis  through  whose  body  he  immediately 
ran  his  sword. 

Dizzied  by  the  mortal  wound,  the  dying  youth 
staggered  around  in  a  circular  course,  and  wherever  his 
freely  flowing  blood  touched  the  ground  water  gushed  up 
in  the  form  of  a  clear,  dancing  fount  that  was  thereafter 
called  Lophis. 

Haliartus  was  midway  of  the  thirty  miles  between 
Thebes  and  Lebadea,  and  its  remains  were  discovered 
about  a  mile  from  the  village  of  Mazi.  The  Lophis  ran 
along  its  western  side  and  was  sometimes  called  the 
Hoplites. 

Pausanias;  IX.  33. 


BCEOTIA  205 

149 

ACIDALIA 

Venus  was  called  Acidalia  from  a  fountain  of  the  same 
name  at  Orchomenus,  in  Boeotia,  which  was  sacred  to 
her,  and  in  which  she  and  the  Graces,  her  handmaids, 
were  wont  to  bathe. 

Servius  thus  explained  why  Virgil  called  Venus  "En- 
eas' Acidalian  mother." 

A  temple  of  the  Charites,  the  Graces,  is  supposed  to 
have  stood  near  the  monastery  of  Skripu,  the  settlement 
now  near  Orchomenus'  site,  where  a  tripod  pedestal  with 
an  inscription  to  the  Charites  was  found ;  and  a  nearby 
Spring,  which  the  women  of  the  present  settlement  make 
use  of  as  a  laundry,  is  said  to  be  the  fountain  that,  as  a 
bathing  place  of  Venus,  must  have  had  some  renown  be- 
fore the  times  of  Troy. 

Virgil;  .lEneid;  I.    line  720. 


Orchomenus 

The  "Well  from  which  the  people  of  Orchomenus  ob- 
tained their  water  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  list  of  the 
place's  attractions,  although  among  them  was  a  marvel 
inferior  to  nothing  in  Greece;  that  was  the  treasury  of 
Minyas,  an  ancient  safe  deposit  vault  that  was  forty- 
one  feet  in  diameter ;  there  is  but  one  of  its  stones  now  left 
but  that  is  more  than  three  feet  thick,  and  1 6  by  8  feet  in 
surface. 

There  was  also  a  tomb  containing  the  bones  of  Hesiod, 
the  whereabouts  of  which  were  unknown  until  revealed, 
rather  gruesomely,  by  a  crow. 

The  town  possessed,  also,  a  temple  of  the  Graces,  to 


206  CENTRAL  GREECE 

"whom  the  Boeotians  were  the  first  of  all  Grecians  to  offer 
sacrifice. 

At  this  Orchomenus,  which  was  70  miles  away  from  the 
town  of  the  same  name  in  Arcadia,  they  annually  offered 
funeral  rites  to  Actason;  and  the  people  had  put  up  a  brass 
^statue  of  a  Specter  and  fastened  it  with  iron  to  a  stone. 

This  work  of  art,  and  the  stone,  had  a  peculiar  and 
treepy  history  to  the  effect  that  once  upon  a  time  the 
Specter  itself  frequented  the  neighborhood  and  devoted 
its  energies  to  injuring  the  land,  perhaps  by  scratching 
up  the  crops,  as  the  crow  scratched  up  the  corpse,  and  its 
-resting  periods  to  sitting  upon  that  stone. 

The  townspeople  having  applied  to  the  oracle  at  Delphi 
to  know  what  they  could  do  to  stop  the  depredations  of 
the  Specter,  were  told  to  bury  in  the  ground  whatever 
remains  of  Actaeon  they  could  find,  and  to  execute  a 
statue  of  the  offending  Specter  and  fasten  it  on  the  stone. 

This  having  been  done  the  Specter,  not  being  able  to 
dislodge  the  statue  and  occupy  his  usual  seat,  presumably 
went  somewhere  else  and  ceased  to  interfere  with  the 
crops  of  the  Orchomenians. 

The  village  of  Skripu  occupies  ground  adjacent  to  the 
site  of  the  ancient  city,  which  was  on  the  banks  of  Lake 
Copais. 

Fausanias;  IX.  38. 


I5I-I54 

Arethusa.     Epicrane 
CEdipodia.     Psamathe 

According  to  Pliny,  the  fountains  of  Arethusa,  Epi- 
crane, CEdipodia  and  Psamathe  were  in  Boeotia. 
CEdipodia  is  doubtless  the  Well  of  CEdipus. 
Arethusa  and  Psamathe  are  mentioned  by  others. 


BCEOTIA  207 

■though  not  as  in  Boeotia;  but,  seemingly,  there  is  no  clue 
■to  the  whereabouts  of  the  fountain  of  Epicrane.  ^ 

Pliny;  IV.  la.  ff 

'II 

Melas 

The  source  of  the  river  Melas  was  within  a  mile  of  the 
"town  of  Orchomenus,  where  two  bountiful  Springs  called 
Phenix  and  Elsea,  gushed  from  the  foot  of  some  precipi- 
tous rocks ;  one  of  them  made  the  Melas  which  emptied 
into  Lake  Cephissis  and  contributed  to  the  production  of 
the  fine  eels  for  which  the  lake  was  famed;  the  other 
formed  a  stream  that  spread  out  and  lost  itself  in  the 
marshes  that  produced  reeds  with  centers  hollow  from 
end  to  end.  Growing,  as  these  reeds  did,  into  all  but 
finished  flutes,  they  became  the  preferred  stock  for  the 
making  of  those  instruments,  and  are  considered  to  have 
been  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in  the  develop- 
ment of  Grecian  music. 

The  name  Melas,  meaning  black,  was  given  to  the  river 
because  of  the  dark  color  of  its  waters  which  was  sup- 
posed to  be  transmitted  to  the  fleeces  of  the  sheep  that 
drank  of  them.  It  was  the  only  river  in  Greece  that  was 
■navigable  at  its  source;  it  is  now  named  Mavropotami, 
.and  its  twin  Springs,  gushing  out  at  the  base  of  some  steep 
rocks  on  the  north  side  of  the  town's  site,  still  produce  a 
stream  that  is  navigable  for  hand-propelled  craft. 

f  ausanias;  IX.  38. 

Cyrtones 

The  small  town  of  Cyrtones  was  about  twenty  stadia 
from  Hyettus.  ^^^ 


2o8  CENTRAL  GREECE 

It  was  built  on  a  high  hill  and  had  a  little  grove  that  was 
sacred  to  the  nymphs  and  that  contained  a  Spring  of  cold 
water  flowing  out  from  a  rock,  and  nourishing  the  soil  to 
such  richness  that  all  kinds  of  trees  that  were  planted 
there  grew  luxuriantly. 

At  Hyettus  there  was  a  temple  of  Hercules  where  such 
as  were  sick  could  obtain  healing. 

Cyrtones  also  had  a  temple  and  a  statue  of  Apollo, 
standing,  of  which  no  criticism  is  made ;  but  of  the  Her- 
cules at  Hyettus  it  was  said  that  it  was  not  artistic  and 
was  made  of  rude  stone  as  in  old  times. 

One  who  endeavors  to  place  those  times  that  were  old 
twenty  centuries  ago  gets  a  sense  of  how  rapidly  the  per- 
spective of  the  years  becomes  foreshortened;  each  time 
the  record  of  them  is  revised  on  the  slate  of  History,  the 
scale  must  be  reduced  and  the  dates  set  down  more  close 
together.  Twenty  thousand  years  from  now.  New  York 
and  its  art  may  seem  to  have  been  almost  coeval  with  the 
neighbors  of  Cyrtones  and  their  stone-work. 

It  is  thought  that  Cyrtones  is  represented  by  the 
present  village  of  Paula,  and  that  an  outgrowth  of  the 
Festival  of  Apollo  and  Artemis  may  be  seen  in  a  yearly 
festival  that  is  conducted  there  in  springtime. 

Hyettus  is  placed  where  the  village  of  Struviki  is 
planted,  west  of  Lake  Copais. 

Pausanias;  IX.  24. 


The  Fountain  of  Donacon 

"Near  the  village  of  Donacon,  in  the  country  of  the 
Thespians,  in  Boeotia,  there  was  a  clear  Spring,  like  silver 
in  appearance,  whose  unsullied  waters  neither  shepherds, 


BCEOTIA  209 

nor  the  goats  feeding  on  the  mountains,  nor  any  other 
cattle  had  touched;  which  neither  wild  bird  nor  wild 
beast  had  disturbed,  nor  bough  from  a  falling  tree. 

"There  was  grass  around  it  which  the  neighboring 
water  nourished,  and  a  wood  that  suffered  the  stream  to 
become  warm  with  no  rays  of  the  sun. 

"To  this  gem-like  mirror  there  came  one  day  the  youth 
Narcissus,  warm  and  fatigued  with  the  labor  of  hunting." 

Charmed  with  the  beauties  of  the  spot  and  the  Spring, 
he  stood  admiringly  beside  it,  all  unconscious  of  the 
danger  for  him  alone  that  lurked  in  its  glassy  surface  and 
silvery  bowl,  for  Narcissus  having  despised  the  love  of  the 
nymph  Echo,  who  had  become  enamored  of  him,  Nemesis, 
the  Goddess  of  Retribution,  decreed  that  he  should  never 
be  loved  by  the  one  he  loved  himself. 

Therefore  "as  he  stooped  to  quench  his  thirst,  a  new 
thirst  grew  upon  him;  when  he  raised  his  head,  after 
drinking,  he  was  attracted  by  the  reflection  of  his  own 
form  seen  in  the  water,  and  he  fell  in  love  with  a  thing 
that  has  no  substance. 

"He  gave  vain  kisses  to  the  deceitful  Spring,  and  he 
clutched  at  his  own  shadow. 

"Extending  his  arms  to  the  surrounding  woods,  he 
cried ;  '  Did  ever  anyone  thus  pine  away  as  do  I  ?  *  And 
Echo  answered  *I,'  and  continued  to  respond,  'Alas,' 
and  'Ah  me,'  in  her  appropriate  way,  at  each  pause  he 
made  at  these  words  in  his  lamentations. 

"When  he  disturbed  the  water  of  the  Spring  with  his 
tears  and  the  form  disappeared  in  the  moving  of  the 
stream,  he  cried,  'Farewell,'  and  Echo  too  cried  out 
'Farewell.'  When  he  struck  his  arms  with  his  hands  in 
his  despair,  Echo  returned  the  like  sound  of  a  blow. 

"Then  he  laid  his  head  upon  the  grass  at  the  brink  of 
the  Spring,  and  when  night  closed  about  him  he  was  seen 


2IO  CENTRAL  GREECE 

no  more — instead  of  his  body  his  friends  found  a  yellow 
flower  with  white  leaves  encompassing  it  in  the  middle.'* 

That  Narcissus  should  have  been  unconscious  of  the 
fate  in  store  for  him  seems  to  be  rather  remarkable,  for  it 
was  known  to  others  through  the  prediction  of  the  sooth- 
sayer Teiresias.  And  it  is  equally  remarkable  that 
Teiresias  himself  died  after  drinking  the  water  of  another 
Spring — that  of  Tilphusa. 

Pausanias,  a  stickler  for  botanical  accuracy,  regards 
the  flower  change  as  a  pure  fiction,  merely  because 
Pamphos  says  that  Proserpine  when  carried  away,  long 
before  the  time  of  Narcissus,  gathered  that  flower  in  the 
fields  of  Enna,  or  Henna.  As  Enna,  which  itself  means 
"Agreeable  fountain,"  was  where  Ceres,  the  mother  of 
Proserpine,  resided,  and  was  lauded  even  by  Cicero,  for 
its  Springs  of  overflowing  water,  Pausanias  might  have 
reconciled  the  flower  fact  to  so  pleasing  a  story  by  two 
very  simple  suppositions. 

Leake  places  the  site  of  Donacon  near  a  hamlet  called 
Tatezd,  at  a  spot  where  there  is  a  copious  fountain  sur- 
rounded by  a  modern  enclosure  of  which  the  materials 
are  ancient  squared  blocks. 

There  are  many  remains  of  former  habitations  in  the 
cornfields  above  the  fountain,  which,  it  may  be  assumed 
in  the  present  light  of  investigation,  is  the  same  that 
caused  the  undoing  of  Narcissus. 

The  name  of  Narcissus*  mother  was  Lily,  Liriope. 

Ovid.    Meta.  III.    Fable  7. 


Thespi^ 

The  waters  of  the  Spring  of  Thespiae  were  believed  to 
have  amatorian  tendencies. 


i        BCEOTIA  2U 

Eros  was  the  first  deity  worshiped  in  the  town;  and 
fifty-two  of  Hercules'  sons  were  born  there  on  the  same 
day. 

Phryne,  was  born  there  also,  the  frail  caper  gatherer 
whose  form  inspired  the  most  famous  works  of  Apelles 
and  Praxiteles,  and  swayed  juries  more  effectively  than 
the  eloquence  of  her  lawyers;  and  who  became  wealthy 
enough  to  rebuild  the  walls  of  Thebes  after  Alexander  had 
destroyed  them. 

Thespiae  lay  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Helicon,  eight  miles  from 
Hesiod's  town  of  Ascra.  In  its  early  days  it  was  terror- 
ized by  a  dragon  that  every  year  devoured  a  youth  who 
was  selected  by  lot  for  the  monster's  meal,  until  one  of  its 
victims,  Cleostratus,  made  the  meal  he  furnished  bring 
about  the  dragon's  death,  by  wearing  a  cunningly  made 
breastplate  that  was  covered  with  concealed  hooks  that 
tore  the  beast  to  pieces  internally  in  his  violent  writhings 
to  eject  what  the  curved  points  prevented  his  dislodging. 

The  remains  of  Thespiee  are  found  around  a  deserted 
village  called  Lefka,  and  the  stream  from  the  ancient 
Spring  is  now  known  as  the  Kanavari  River. 

Athenaus;  II.  is.    XIII.  60. 


LiBETHRIAS   AND   PeTRA 

Libethrias  and  Petra  were  two  fountains  of  Mt.  Libe-. 
thrium  40  stadia  from  Coronea. 

Springs  have  been  poetically  and  appropriately  called^ 
the  Breasts  of  Nature,  from  which  men  draw  sustenance. 
as  in  their  younger  years  they  fed  at  the  fountains  of.- 
their  human  foster  mothers.  And  perhaps  if  the  phrase. 
could  be  followed  far  enough  back  the  mountain  Liber, 


212  CENTRAL  GREECE 

thriirm  might  be  found  to  be  one  of  the  original  artists 
who  pictured  the  pretty  thought  in  its  formation  of  these 
twin  fountains. 

The  rocks  and  the  mountains  are  the  most  popular 
artists  of  inanimate  nature,  for  the  works  of  the  stars 
with  their  fondness  for  sketchy  and  Cubist  constellation 
forms,  appeal  to  few  besides  the  astronomers  and  their 
imaginative  disciples;  and  the  clouds,  the  greatest  and 
the  most  prolific  masters  of  them  all,  nervously  destroy- 
ing their  artistic  creations  the  moment  they  make  them, 
and  permitting  but  a  fleeting  view  of  the  wealth  of  color 
and  infinity  of  form  in  their  painting  and  sculpture,  have 
a  very  inadequate  number  of  admirers. 

The  statue  of  Niobe  by  Mt.  Sipylus  was  little  more 
famous  than  the  work  of  Mt.  Libethrium  which,  besides 
having  man-made  statues  of  the  Muses,  produced  these 
two  fountains,  one  called  Libethrias,  and  the  other  Petra, 
that  not  only  resembled  the  breasts  of  woman  but 
actually  poured  forth  streams  that  had  the  appearance 
of  milk. 

These  milky  streams  were  but  a  couple  of  miles  distant 
from  a  place  closely  connected  with  two  famous  animals 
of  antiquity;  a  place  where  there  was  one  of  the  many 
holes  through  which  Hercules  dragged  up  Cerberus,  the 
watchdog  of  Hades ;  and  a  place  where  was  the  spot  from 
which  the  ram  with  the  golden  fleece  set  out  for  Colchis 
at  the  eastern  end  of  the  Black  Sea  on  his  long-distance 
flight  through  the  air  with  two  little  passengers,  the  chil- 
dren of  Queen  Nephele  and  Sisyphus'  brother  Athamas 
who  afterwards  forsook  Nephele  for  Cadmus'  daughter 
Ino.  To  save  her  children  from  the  stepmother's  perse- 
cutions, Nephele  set  them  on  the  soaring  ram  that  let 
one  of  his  charges,  the  little  girl  Helle,  slip  off  into  the 
water  of  the  Hellespont  whose  first  syllables  commemor- 


BCEOTIA  213 

rated  the  fall  as  the  Dardanelles'  last  does,  in  a  measure, 
today. 

This  ram,  whose  name  and  pedigree  are  stated  in  con- 
nection with  the  Spring  of  Glauce,  could  talk,  and  was  of 
so  kindly  and  generous  a  disposition  that  on  arriving  at 
the  journey's  destination,  Colchis,  he  took  off  his  golden 
fleece  and  presented  it  to  Phrixus,  Helle's  brother,  as  a 
token  of  friendship  and  as  a  memento  of  their  aerial  trip; 
and,  having  finished  his  earthly  mission,  he  leaped  to  the 
stars  where  as  a  constellation  he  still  shines  as  brightly  as 
when  he  wore  his  gleaming  wool. 

The  Golden  Fleece  was  hung  in  a  grove  under  the 
guardianship  of  an  insomnious  dragon,  and  it  was  the 
coveted  wealth  that  led  to  the  expedition  of  Jason  and 
the  other  Argonauts,  though  the  worth  of  gold  that  it 
may  have  represented,  and  that  they  after  many  adven- 
tures secured  in  the  fleece,  was  offset  time  and  again  by 
the  trail  of  misery  subsequently  traced  by  Medea  who 
was  brought  back  with  the  fleece. 

Libethrium  is  believed  to  be  that  mountain  in  the 
Heliconian  range  now  called  Mt.  Zagara,  and  its  ancient 
name  was  perhaps  applied  to  it  by  Thracians  from 
Libethra,  a  town  on  Mt.  Olympus  in  Macedonia,  or  in 
memory  of  the  Thracian  Mt.  Libethras. 

Thrace  also  had  a  town  named  Petra;  and  Thessaly  had 
one  called  Coroneia. 

Pausanias;  IX.  34. 


160 

Aganippe 

On  the  left  of  the  Mt.  Helicon  road  from  Ascra  to  the 
Grove  of  the  Muses  was  the  fountain  of  Aganippe  which 


214  CENTRAL  GREECE 

took  its  name  from  the  daughter  of  Temessus,  a  river 
that  flowed  around  Helicon. 

Farther  along,  and  just  before  reaching  the  Grove, 
there  was  an  image  of  the  Muses'  nurse,  Eupheme, 
carved  in  stone;  and  next  to  that  a  statue  of  Linus  famed 
for  his  musical  skill,  and,  like  poor  Marsyas,  killed  by- 
Apollo  on  account  of  it.  Then  followed  statues  of  the 
Muses,  and  of  poets,  and  of  noted  musicians,  Thamyris, 
Arion,  Sacadas,  Hesiod,  and  Orpheus  the  son  of  the 
Muse  Calliope.  Festivals  were  held  in  the  Grove,  and 
the  games  of  the  Muses  were  celebrated  there ;  and  around 
it  there  were  the  residences  of  many  people. 

The  statues  were  taken  to  Constantinople  where  they 
remained  until  404  a.d.  when  they  were  destroyed  by  fire. 

The  mountain  range  of  Helicon  was  in  the  south- 
western part  of  Boeotia,  and  was  in  effect  a  continuation 
of  the  Parnassus  range.  The  greatest  of  its  heights  was 
slightly  under  5000  feet  although  the  ancients  considered 
it  the  equal  of  Parnassus  which  was  3000  feet  higher. 

Of  all  the  mountains  in  Greece,  Helicon  was  the  most 
fertile  and  the  best  shaded,  and  its  eastern  slopes 
abounded  in  Springs  which  gave  the  appellation  of- 
"Many  fountained  Helicon." 

At  the  base  of  this  eastern  side  stood  the  village  of 
Ascra,  the  birthplace,  about  the  VHIth  century,  B.C., 
of  Hesiod  the  founder  of  the  Pierian  school  of  Poetry 
and,  next  to  Homer,  the  earliest  of  the  Greek  poets 
whose  works  have  been  preserved. 

The  Spring  is  sometimes  called  the  Hyantian  Aganippe, 
because  the  Hyantes  were  the  original  inhabitants  of 
Boeotia;  and  from  the  fountain  itself  the  Muses  were 
called  the  Aganippides.  In  fact  Aganippe  has  every 
credential  to  prove  it  the  "Pierian  Spring"  and  the  one 
to  which  Pope's  directions  for  taking  the  waters  may 


BCEOTIA  215 

be  applied,  although  centuries  ago  Castalia  came  to  be 
accepted  as  the  fountain  of  the  Muses  and  the  inspira- 
tional Spring  of  Poesy  in  place  of  Aganippe,  the  original 
and  real  Spring  of  the  Muses  that  existed  even  long  before 
its  younger  sister  Spring  of  Hippocrene  on  Mt.  Helicon 
was  produced  by  the  pawing  protest  of  Pegasus. 

Castalia's  great  but  fallacious  fame  appears  to  have 
been  built  up  on  a  foundation  of  errors  laid  by  distant 
Italian  poets,  who  possibly  mistook  Cassotis  for  Castalia. 
The  latter  was  outside  of  the  temple  grounds  and  was 
used  to  sprinkle,  and  even  as  a  bath  to  purif}^,  the  pil- 
grims before  they  entered  the  sacred  enclosure;  while 
Cassotis  adjoined  the  temple  into  which  its  waters  ran 
to  disappear  in  the  original  goatherd's  cleft  of  inspiring 
vapors.  Further,  without  any  ancient  warrant,  the  in- 
spirational properties  were  transferred  from  the  cleft  to 
the  water  whose  effects  were  assumed  to  be  seen  in  the 
poetical  form  of  the  oracular  announcements,  when  in 
fact  the  announcements  were  the  work  of  poets  employed 
by  the  temple  to  express  the  substance  of  the  P}^hia's 
trance  utterances  made  in  the  old-time  jargon  of  the 
goatherd. 

None  of  the  fountain  heads  of  authority  about  Grecian 
mythology  has  a  word  that  warrants  according  to  Cas- 
talia its  unmerited  reputation;  and  there  is  no  ancient 
evidence  that  that  fountain  ever  inspired  anyone;  or  even 
that  its  somewhat  distant  neighbor-Spring  Cassotis  gave 
poetical  inspiration. 

None  of  the  oldest  writers  mentions  meeting  with  a 
Muse  on  Mt.  Parnassus;  and  indeed  it  was  not  an  attrac- 
tive mountain  for  ladies  of  Muse-like  temperament. 

It  was,  of  all  places,  the  least  likely  one  to  attract  a 
Muse;  its  gloomy  caverns ;  and  its  long-drawn-out  dragon 
and  other  wild  beasts;  and  the  noises  of  the  crazy  and 


2i6  CENTRAL  GREECE 

crapulous  crowds  that  celebrated  the  wild  revels  of  Bac- 
chus on  that  mountain,  were  more  than  enough  to  keep 
the  mild  Muses  far  away  from  its  dangers  and  disorders. 

Helicon  was  their  birthplace  and  its  Spring  of  Aganippe 
was  their  own  cherished  fountain,  there  they  were  reared; 
there  they  frolicked  in  infancy  tenderly  cared  for  by  their 
loved  and  loving  nurse,  Eupheme,  whose  statue  occupied 
a  prominent  place  before  their  grove  on  Helicon,  and 
whose  son,  the  archer  Crotus,  at  the  earnest  request  of 
the  Muses,  was  made  even  more  prominent  by  Zeus  who 
placed  him  in  the  sky  where  everyone  may  view  him  as 
the  constellation  Sagittarius. 

Even  if,  on  prying  into  the  fairly  irreproachable  past 
of  the  Muses,  one  is  inclined  to  fancy  that  Boeotia  was 
not  the  home  of  their  earliest  days,  and  is  tempted  by  the 
number  of  places  in  ancient  Thrace  whose  names  are  the 
same  as  those  of  Boeotian  places  which  are  connected 
with  the  Muses,  to  think  that  they  came  from  the  north, 
one  will  readily  find  the  name  Helicon  there,  but  will 
search  in  vain  for  Parnassus. 

The  facts,  evident  to  everyone,  clearly  show  that  Par- 
nassus' atmosphere  was  not  productive  of  poetry;  and 
that  Helicon,  in  its  home  of  Boeotia,  was  conducive  to 
poetry  of  the  highest  order,  and  was  the  native  heath  of 
Orthometry. 

If  Parnassus  produced  any  poets  their  lights  are  hidden 
in  measures  that  are  no  better  known  than  the  where- 
abouts of  the  one  that  was  employed  in  harvesting  the 
crop  of  pickled  peppers  that  was  used  for  twisting  the 
tongues  of  bewildered  youth  of  a  generation  now  nearing 
the  century  mark;  so  far,  there  is  nothing  to  indicate  that 
Parnassus  and  its  district  of  Phocis  ever  produced  any 
notable  poets — while  Helicon  and  its  district  did  so 
prolifically. 


BCEOTIA  217 

One  glance  around  Mt.  Helicon  shows  the  atmosphere 
fairly  dancing  in  heated  waves  of  the  Divine  Afflatus 
that  rise  from  all  about  its  immediate  neighborhood — 
from  the  homes  of  such  immortal  singers  as; — Corinna  of 
Tanagra;  and  Myrtis,  another  famous  poetess  of  Boeotia 
— for  the  air  inspired  the  ladies  as  well ;  and  the  children 
too,  as  Pindar  composed  in  his  cradle; — and  Hesiod  of 
Ascra,  founder  of  the  Pierian  school,  and  born  at  the  base 
of  Helicon  itself ;  and  Pindar  the  Lyric  Laureate  of  Greece 
who  sang  in  his  cradle  522  years  before  the  Christian  era. 

Aganippe  has  been  sadly  defrauded,  and  it  is  time  she 
came  into  her  own  and  be  accorded  recognition  as  the 
Inspiring  Fount  of  the  Muses  and  their  songful  subjects, 
the  poets. 

Pyrgaki  has  been  identified  as  Ascra;  and  Aganippe  is 
seen  in  the  fountain  that  issues  from  the  left  bank  of  a 
torrent  between  Pyrgaki  and  the  Grove  of  the  Muses 
which  latter  has  been  located  by  the  church  and  convent 
of  St.  Nicholas,  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Marandali  the  eastern 
summit  of  Helicon,  through  remains  found  there  of  the 
stones  of  habitations,  and  an  inscription  relating  to  the 
games  of  the  Muses. 

Pausanias;  IX.  29. 
Strabo;IX.3.    §5. 


I6l 
The  Fountain  of  Hippocrene 

The  fountain  of  Hippocrene  was  between  two  and 
three  miles  above  the  Grove  of  the  Muses.  A  brook,  the 
Olmeius,  that  ran  from  it  joined  the  Permessus,  a  brook 
from  the  fountain  of  Aganippe,  and  together  they  flowed 
past  the  east  side  of  Haliartus  into  Lake  Copais  as  one 
stream,  now  the  Kafalari. 


2i8  CENTRAL  GREECE 

This  fountain,  so  called  from  the  Greek  "Hippos,"  a 
horse,  and  "Krene, "  a  fountain,  was  said  to  have  been 
produced  by  a  stroke  from  the  hoof  of  the  winged  horse 
Pegasus,  for  the  reason  related  below. 

It  is  also  called  the  Gorgon  Fountain  because  Pegasus 
sprang  from  the  blood  of  the  Gorgon  Medusa. 

To  see  this  wondrous  prodigy,  Minerva  made  a  special 
trip  to  Mt.  Helicon. 

The  Muses,  assuring  her  that  the  Spring  had  been 
produced  in  the  manner  reported,  gladly  conducted  her 
to  it,  and  she  stood  for  a  long  time  admiring  the  waters 
surrounded  by  groves  of  ancient  wood,  and  caves,  and 
grass  studded  with  flowers  innumerable. 

Then  the  goddess  seated  herself  under  the  pleasant 
shade  of  the  grove,  and  the  Muses  told  her  the  particulars. 

The  nine  daughters  of  Pierus  of  Macedonia  challenged 
them  to  a  test  of  skill  in  singing  to  the  accompaniment  of 
the  lyre.  The  nymphs  of  the  rivers  were  chosen  as  um- 
pires and  they  sat  around  on  seats  made  of  the  natural 
rock. 

The  challengers  lost  not  only  the  contest  but  their 
tempers  as  well,  and  proceeding  from  abuse  to  menacing 
gestures,  they  were  changed  into  chattering  magpies. 

During  the  contest  everything  was  motionless  to  hear 
the  songs,  save  Helicon  which  rose  higher  and  higher  in 
its  delight  until  Pegasus,  to  put  a  stop  to  this,  gave  a 
kick  with  one  of  his  hoofs  from  the  print  of  which  arose 
this  fountain. 

The  wonderful  birth  of  the  Spring  was  beautifully 
portrayed  on  the  handsomest  conduit  at  Corinth  which 
was  adorned  with  a  figure  of  Pegasus,  so  arranged  that 
the  water  gushed  from  under  the  hoof  exactly  as  it  did  in 
that  thrilling  instant  when  Helicon's  intense  excitement 
was  rebuked  by  Bellerophon's  flying  horse. 


BCEOTIA  219 

Whether  or  not  the  ambitious  forecast  of  Pierus,  King 
of  Thessaly,  in  naming  his  nine  daughters  as  Muses,  bred 
in  them  an  overweening  ambition  and  a  magnified  es- 
timate of  their  abihties  which  led  to  their  melancholy 
fate,  it  seems  probable  that  Pierus'  course  gave  rise  to  a 
question  that  the  most  learned  of  the  ancients  later  on 
were  unable  to  settle  with  unanimity,  that  is  whether 
there  were  originally  nine  Muses  or  only  three. 

In  addition  to  giving  his  own  name  to  the  mountain  in 
Macedonia,  some  said  that  he  ordered  that  nine  Muses 
should  be  worshiped  instead  of  three,  while  others  held 
that  there  were  nine  Muses  and  that  he  only  called  his 
daughters  after  them. 

At  any  rate,  the  Springs  of  Aganippe  and  Hippocrene 
were  considered  sacred  to  them  and  one  may  well 
connect,  preferably  the  former,  with  Pope's  adjura- 
tion to ; — 

"Drink  deep  or  taste  not  the  Pierian  Spring" 

on  the  ground  that ; — 

"A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing." 

At  this  visit  that  Minerva  made  to  the  Spring  she, 
seemingly,  became  infatuated  with  its  beauties,  so  that 
she  loved  to  return  to  it,  and  enjoyed  bathing  in  its 
pleasant  waters;  and  it  was  owing  to  one  of  her  return 
visits  that  this  Spring,  which  was  supposed  to  be  the 
making  of  poets,  led  to  the  making  of  a  prophet,  the  un- 
fortunate Seer  Teiresias. 

His  mother,  the  nymph  Chariclo,  was  one  of  the  special 
favorites  of  Minerva,  and  "once  on  a  time  as  they  twain 
were  bathing  in  fair  flowing  Heliconian  Hippocrene,  and 


220  CENTRAL  GREECE 

noontide  calm  was  holding  the  mountain,  and  much  still- 
ness was  pervading  the  spot,  Teiresias,  alone  with  his 
dogs,  was  roaming;  and,  thirsting  unspeakably,  he  came 
to  a  stream  of  the  fountain  and  beheld  what  was  not 
lawful  for  him  to  see.  Then  wroth  Athena  addressed 
him  and  said;  'Thou  shalt  never  more  bear  hence  thine 
eyesight  on  an  evil  journey.'  And  night  fell  upon  the 
eyes  of  the  youth. 

"But  the  nymph  shrieked  out ;  '  What,  awful  Goddess, 
hast  thou  done  to  my  Son?  Are  ye  Goddesses  Friends 
such  as  this?  O  accursed  child,  thou  sawest  the  bosom 
and  limbs  of  Athena ;  but  never  again  wilt  thou  behold  the 
sun;  ah,  wretched  me.'  And  clasping  her  dear  son  round 
with  both  arms,  the  Mother,  deeply  weeping,  set  up  the 
fate  of  plaintive  nightingales." 

Greatly  grieved  by  the  transports  of  the  sorrowing 
mother,  the  goddess  explained  to  her  the  decree  of  Cronus, 
— That  whoso  shall  have  beheld  any  of  the  Immiortals, 
when  the  Divinity  himself  shall  not  choose,  this  same 
should  behold  with  a  heavy  penalty. 

And  then  she  promised  to  make  Teiresias  a  prophet  to 
be  sung  of  by  posterity,  and,  as  a  partial  offset  to  the  loss 
of  his  sight,  she  added  to  his  hearing  the  faculty  of  under- 
standing the  speech  of  the  birds,  and  to  his  existence  she 
added  many  years,  giving  him  a  far  distant  end  of  his 
Hfe. 

At  the  place  now  called  Makariotissa  there  is  a  fine 
Spring  of  water  known  as  Kryopegadi,  the  Cold  Spring, 
which  is  said  to  be  none  other  than  the  Hippocrene  made 
by  Pegasus  on  Mt.  Helicon;  for  he  produced  another 
fountain,  with  his  hoof,  in  Troezen. 

Ovid.  Meta.  V.    Fable  2. 
Callimachus;  Bath  of  Pallas. 
Pausanias;  IX.  31. 


BCEOTIA  221 

162 
Other  Springs  of  Mt.  Helicon 

The  mountain  of  the  Muses  was  called  Fountful  Heli- 
con because  of  its  many  Springs,  but  Aganippe  and  Hippo- 
crene  absorbed  so  much  of  the  world's  attention  that  the 
others  were  unnoted,  unnamed  and  unsung. 

Many  of  its  nameless  fountains  no  doubt  rose  in  caves 
and  were  similar  to  other  cavern  Springs  in  the  range  of 
mountains  of  which  Helicon  formed  a  part;  caves  that 
are  described  as  being,  not  gloomy  recesses  among  the 
rocks  of  the  mountain,  but,  a  series  of  grottoes  through 
which  one  could  ramble  without  the  aid  of  torches ;  cool 
spacious  chambers  with  a  subdued  light  of  their  own. 

They  offered  pleasant  retreats  to  which  the  Muses 
might  retire  from  the  heat  and  glare  of  siimmer  middays, 
and,  in  the  dim  but  still  sufficient  light,  criticize  with 
frankness  the  efforts  of  each  other's  protegees  among  the 
poets. 

In  the  cool  quietude  of  these  petrical  parlors,  ceiled 
and  adorned  with  glistening  stalactites,  the  reposeful 
melody  of  the  many-toned  murmurs  of  the  fountain 
streams  floated  softly  and  faintly  to  the  ear  in  notes 
that  set  the  key  for  novel  songs,  and  gave  suggestions 
for  new  rhj^thms  and  untried  melodies  in  meter. 

Often  those  notes  from  the  Springs  in  the  Heliconian 
caves,  conveyed  by  the  caressing  touch  with  which  some 
not  impartial  Muse  would  gently  brush  the  ear  of  her 
favorite  poet  in  a  dream,  may  have  waked  in  his  soul  the 
harmonies  that  made  his  song  and  fame  immortal. 

Pausanias;  IX.  29.    X.  32. 


PHOCIS 

163 
Phocis 

A  succession  of  contracting  centers  narrowed  to  a 
point  in  the  little  province  of  Phocis,  the  sides  of  which,  if 
it  were  square,  would  each  be  only  28  miles  long. 

It  was  a  focal  point  to  which  the  eyes  of  the  world  were 
for  centuries  directed  to  see  the  shadows  of  coming  events 
mirrored  for  the  benefit  of  inquisitive  mankind. 

In  Phocis,  the  bulk  of  its  mountain  range  of  Parnassus 
with  three  snow-capped  peaks,  one  of  them  over  eight 
thousand  feet  in  height,  left  room  for  only  twenty-two 
towns. 

The  highest  peak  of  Parnassus  was  the  scene  of  the 
orgies  in  the  worship  of  Dionysus,  while  all  the  rest  of  the 
mountain  was  sacred  to  Apollo  and  the  Muses. 

The  immortal  town  of  Phocis,  Delphi  (now  called 
Castri),  contained  the  renowned  oracle  and  temple  of 
Apollo;  it  lay  on  the  upper  slope  of  the  valley  of  the 
Pleistus  River,  and  on  the  south  side  of  Parnassus,  two 
spurs  of  which  semicircled  it  east  and  west,  while  the 
Corinthian  Gulf  flowed  eight  miles  south  of  it.  Greece 
was  the  center  of  the  world  and  Phocis  was  the  center  of 
Greece.  And  Delphi  was  the  center  of  Phocis,  as  had 
been  accurately  established  by  the  very  simple  method 
of  loosing  two  doves  at  opposite  ends  of  the  country  and 
noting  that  they  came  together  on  Mt.  Parnassus  at 
Delphi. 

222 


PHOCIS  223 

Then  came  the  center  of  Delphi  which  was  marked  by 
a  white  stone,  none  other  than  the  stone  that  Rhea  gave 
to  her  husband  Cronus,  instead  of  Zeus.  It  was  oiled 
and  poHshed  every  day,  and  he  who  is  able  to  imagine 
anyone  being  near  the  North  Pole  without  having  an 
uncanny  impulse  to  step  on  the  tip  of  it  may  beheve  that 
it  was  not  often  necessary  to  renew  the  Delphic  monu- 
ment. 

Phocis  owes  its  fame  to  the  oracle  and  the  temple ;  and 
the  stone  lay  by  the  temple;  to  that,  everyone  gravitated 
naturally  all  the  way  from  the  edges  of  the  earth;  the 
pious,  the  generous,  the  wise,  the  healthy,  the  brave, 
the  honest;  all  these  and  their  opposites  were  drawn  to 
the  temple  by  many  motives ;  some  to  consult  the  oracle, 
and  fill  the  temple  with  votive  offerings,  and  its  treasury 
with  wealth — and  others,  to  abstract  those  presents. 

The  temple  was  plundered  from  the  beginning;  robbers 
went  to  it  singly,  and  by  battalions.  At  times  whole 
armies  pillaged  it,  or  tried  to;  and  at  others,  petty  thieves, 
from  emperors  to  common  sneaks,  made  away  with  what- 
ever they  could  carry — even  the  birds  were  said  to  peck 
off  pieces  of  gold  from  the  offerings. 

Among  the  Greeks  themselves,  the  Phocians  committed 
the  greatest  depredations;  but  the  Spartans  rivaled  them, 
and  the  Phlegyasians  and  the  Medonians  were  not  far 
behind.  Some  of  the  individual  thieves  were ; — Hercules ; 
Pyrrhus,  son  of  Achilles;  the  son  of  King  Crius  of  Euboea; 
Phalaecus;  Philomelus;  and  an  unknown  man  who  was 
captured,  and  eaten,  by  a  wolf  that  was  reproduced  in  a 
statue  which  was  added  to  the  temple's  collection. 

Of  foreigners,  the  army  of  Xerxes  attacked  it  in  480 
B.C. ;  and  afterwards  Brennus'  freebooters  from  Asia  Minor 
who,  though  40,000  strong,  were  apparently  repulsed. 

Nero   carried   off   500   statues;   and  Sulla,   and  the 


224  CENTRAL  GREECE 

Emperors  Constantine  and  Gains  took  whatever  they 
fancied. 

So  numerous  were  the  thefts  from  the  temple  that 
Theopompus  wrote  a  book  enumerating  the  treasures  of 
which  the  shrine  was  plundered. 

The  oracle  was  the  oldest  in  the  world;  Earth,  the  first 
of  all  the  divinities,  established  it,  and  Poseidon  became 
a  partner,  with  Daphnis,  a  mountain  nymph,  as  priestess. 
Earth  retired  in  favor  of  Themis  (Justice)  who  passed 
her  interest  to  Apollo;  and  he  secured  sole  control  by 
giving  Poseidon  the  oracle  of  Calauria  in  exchange;  and 
it  continued  under  Apollo's  auspices  until  it  was  closed. 

If  Apollo's  title  was  quite  regular,  no  one  has  yet  ex- 
plained why  he  had  to  kill  the  dragon,  Pytho,  that  Earth 
had  provided  for  the  oracle's  protection,  and  then  purge 
himself  of  murder;  but,  after  that  dragon,  the  priestess 
was  designated  Pythia,  and  the  town  was  once  called 
Pytho. 

There  was  no  question  too  momentous,  none  too  paltry 
for  the  oracle  to  answer — from  how  a  king  could  conquer 
a  country,  or  save  his  own,  to  how  a  fisher  could  increase 
his  catch.  The  oracle  acted  at  need  in  any  capacity; 
as  prophet,  advisor,  physician;  and  it  was  practically  a 
Court  of  last  Appeal,  with  none  of  the  tedious  forms  and 
delays  of  the  Mundane  Law,  but  with  all  the  latter's 
power  over  life.  If  it  directed  the  sacrifice  of  a  beast  or 
of  a  human  being,  there  was  no  evading  the  order,  al- 
though many  of  its  doomings  were  apparently  unjust  and 
cruel;  for,  to  cure  a  pestilence,  it  might  order  the  sacrifice 
of  a  goat,  or  it  might  require  the  death  of  the  handsomest 
maiden  and  lad  in  the  town — sometimes  as  an  annual 
affair.  To  obtain  water  in  a  time  of  scarcity,  one  man 
was  told  to  go  out  and  kill  the  first  person  he  met.  (See 
No.  148.) 


PHOCIS  225 

If  it  levied  a  fine,  payment  was  made  without  any  ado. 

And  yet,  with  such  extensive  power,  and  at  a  time  when 
the  golden  key  was  in  general  use  to  obtain  ends  ques- 
tionably, it  was  said  that  there  was  only  one  known 
instance  of  the  oracle's  having  pronounced  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  an  outsider.  That  one  outsider  was  Cleomenes,  a 
ruler  of  the  Lacedaemonians,  and  he  bribed  the  oracle  to 
say  in  reply  to  his  subjects'  queries  whatever  he  desired. 

He  ended  his  own  life  horribly  in  a  fit  of  madness. 

Nero,  before  68  a.d.,  being  displeased  with  one  of  the 
oracles,  sacrificed  an  ass  to  the  god,  and,  having  thus 
shown  his  estimate  of  the  prophecy,  ordered  the  temple 
to  be  closed;  but  events  of  the  future  were  still  revealed 
as  late  as  360  a.d.,  in  the  time  of  the  Emperor  Julian. 

It  was  probably  closed  definitively  soon  after  379  a.d., 
which  year  marked  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Theodo- 
sius  who  abolished  all  religious  places  and  practices  of 
paganism;  though  he  himself  continued  to  pry  into  the 
future  through  his  own  prophet  the  Egyptian  anchorite 
John  of  Lycopolis,  a  Christian  seer  who,  among  other 
correct  revelations,  predicted  the  year  in  which  the 
Emperor's  career  would  come  to  an  end. 


164 

Castalia 

The  sacred,  classic  and  famous  fountain  of  Castalia 
was  on  the  right  of  the  road  leading  from  the  gymnasium 
to  the  temple  of  Apollo  within  the  sacred  precincts  in  the 
upper  part  of  the  town  of  Delphi. 

This  fountain  rose  in  the  angle  where  the  spreading 
bases  of  two  peaks  of  Mt.  Parnassus  came  together,  and, 
though  obviously  fed  by  the  perpetual  snows  of  the 


226  CENTRAL  GREECE 

mountain  tops  above  it,  its  water  was  said  to  come  from 
the  subterranean  Styx,  and  to  have  a  connection  with  the 
Cephissus,  as  offerings  thrown  in  the  stream  of  the  latter 
had  been  found  in  Castalia's  brook. 

Its  water  was  sweet  to  the  taste,  and,  according  to 
Roman  writers,  a  draught  of  it  caused  poetic  inspiration; 
even  Byron's  party  "drank  deep"  of  Castalia  (unmind- 
ful that  that  direction  was  given  by  Pope  for  taking  the 
water  of  the  Pierian  Spring  of  Mt.  Helicon),  instead  of 
snuffing  the  vapor  in  the  temple  as  was  done  by  the 
priestesses. 

Castalia  furnished  the  holy  water  of  the  Delphic 
temple,  and  all  who  consulted  the  oracle  were  wont  to 
sprinkle  their  hair  with  it,  while  those  seeking  purifica- 
tion for  murder  bathed  their  whole  bodies. 

Though  the  oracle  was  coeval  with  the  first  era  of 
creation,  when  it  could  have  been  in  use  only  for  the  in- 
formation and  guidance  of  the  early  divinities,  and 
though  it  was  probably  put  at  the  disposal  of  men  as  soon 
as  they  could  pay  the  price,  its  first  recorded  predictions 
related  to  the  Trojan  war  and  its  cause,  and  were  perhaps 
made  in  the  generation  preceding  that  event. 

Its  introduction  for  the  use  of  men  was  made  through 
the  humble  medium  of  an  observing  goatherd  who,  while 
pasturing  flocks  on  the  slopes  of  Parnassus,  noticed  that 
his  charges  were  thrown  into  convulsions  whenever  they 
approached  a  certain  deep  cleft  in  the  mountain.  Ort 
investigation  he  found  that  there  arose  from  the  fissure 
a  peculiar  vapor  which  caused  a  temporary  bewilderment 
during  which  his  utterances  became  unintelligible. 

It  was  a  short  and  natural  step  from  that  discovery  ta 
utilizing  the  place  for  oracular  purposes  by  placing  over 
the  cleft  a  temple,  which  was  constructed  of  tree  branches 
to  resemble  a  hut.    A  tripod  or  three-legged  stool  that 


PHOCIS  227 

was  covered  with  the  skin  of  the  Python  killed  by  Apollo, 
was  then  set  at  the  edge  of  the  goatherd's  cleft,  and  the 
Pythia,  a  young  woman,  prepared  for  her  part  by  ablu- 
tion in  the  water  of  the  Castalian  fount,  sat  down  and 
inhaling  the  hallowed  vapor  discoursed  under  its  in- 
fluence. Afterwards  her  utterances  were  translated  by 
the  attending  priests  and  made  public  in  poetical  form. 
The  priestess  after  bathing  in  the  water  of  Castalia 
crowned  herself  with  laurel  and  masticated  some  of  its 
leaves  before  uttering  the  oracular  responses. 

The  hut  temple  was  destroyed  by  Deucalion's  deluge 
in  1503  B.C.,  and  was  replaced  with  a  structure  made  of 
wax  and  the  wings  of  bees.  This  must  have  presented  a 
very  handsome  appearance  before  it  acquired  a  coating 
of  dust  and  felt  its  first  summer's  sun,  and  it  was 
quite  logically  sent  as  a  present  to  the  Hyperboreans 
whose  climate  was  better  adapted  for  meltable  building 
material. 

A  third  temple,  of  brass,  was  destroyed  by  a  landslide. 
The  fourth  was  built  of  stone,  by  Trophonius  and  Aga- 
medes,  and  became  famous  as  early  as  the  Vlllth  cen- 
tury before  Christ;  it  was  destroyed  by  fire  548  B.C.  and 
was  rebuilt  by  the  Amphictyones  at  a  cost  of  nearly 
$600,000.  This,  the  fifth  temple,  seems  to  have  endured 
to  the  end. 

From  the  goatherd's  cleft  covered  with  a  hut,  the 
sacred  precincts  had  expanded,  in  the  time  of  the  fifth 
temple,  to  an  enclosure  of  such  extent  that  several  en- 
trances were  required  to  accommodate  the  visitors,  and 
they  contained  a  number  of  buildings  that  housed  a 
collection  of  a  quantity,  quality  and  value  that  made  the 
cost  of  the  temple  commensurate.  In  its  vestibule  the 
Seven  Wise  Men  of  Greece,  Bias,  Chilo,  Cleobulus,  Pitta- 
cus,  Solon,  Thales  and  Myson,  had  placed  short  precepts 


228  CENTRAL  GREECE 

useful  to  the  conduct  of  human  affairs,  such  as,  "Know 
Thyself,"  and  "Nothing  immoderately." 
■   The  collection  included  paintings,  carvings  and  statu- 
ary, relics  and  treasure. 

The  paintings  portrayed  the  drama  of  Greece  from 
the  rising  of  the  curtain,  and  made  everyone  intimately 
familiar  with  the  actors  and  their  features. 

The  statuary  was  by  artists  of  such  renown  that  to- 
day even  fragments,  broken  pieces  of  their  works,  are 
treasures  for  modern  museums,  and  standards  whose 
approximate  perfection  living  artists  still  emulate  with- 
out excelling.  The  temple  in  the  time  of  Pliny  had  three 
thousand  statues  and  contained  one  of  Apollo  made  in 
pure  gold;  and  Athenasus  says  there  was  one  of  Phryne, 
by  Praxiteles,  also  of  solid  gold. 

Crates  called  it  "  a  votive  offering  of  the  profligacy  of 
Greece." 

The  relics  ranged  from  the  sacred  stone  that  Cronus 
swallowed,  to  the  iron  chair  that  the  poet  Pindar  sat  in 
when  he  visited  the  temple,  a  piece  of  furniture  that  to- 
day would  take  precedence  of  Shakespeare's  seat  in 
Avon. 

The  arms  that  heroes  bore  and  the  armor  that  they 
wore  were  displayed  to  mark  their  gratitude  to  the  gods 
for  victory,  and  to  kindle  or  keep  alive  the  fighting  fire 
of  their  successors. 

And  to  the  artistic  and  historic  value  of  many  of  the 
objects  was  added  the  intrinsic  merit  of  the  pure  metal  of 
which  they  were  made. 

The  name  of  the  fountain  of  Castalia  is  stated  variously 
to  have  been  derived;  from  a  daughter  of  Achelous;  from 
a  male  native,  Castalius ;  and  from  Castalia,  a  nymph  of 
Parnassus. 

The  names  of  several  of  the  features  in  the  neighbor- 


PHOCIS  229 

hood  of  Castalia  are  usually  connected  with  Apollo  and 
his  intimate  associates;  thus,  the  name  Delphi  came  from 
Delphos  the  son  of  Apollo  and  Ceteno ;  and  the  Pythian 
cave  was  called  after  Delphos'  son,  Pythis;  while  the 
nymph  Corycia,  a  companion  of  Apollo,  gave  her  name 
to  the  Corycian  cavern. 

Castalia,  which  still  continues  with  undiminished  flow, 
is  now  called  Ai  lanni,  from  a  small  chapel  of  St.  John 
standing  above  one  corner  of  its  basin;  and  the  same  name 
is  given  to  the  whole  course  of  the  rivulet  down  to  the 
Pleistus.  It  lies  between  200  and  300  yards  to  the  east  of 
the  upper  extremity  of  the  present  village  of  Castri,  or 
Kustri,  which  occupies  a  portion  of  the  site  of  the  ancient 
town  of  Delphi,  and  is  on  the  right  hand  in  entering  a 
narrow  fissure  which  separates  the  two  renowned  Par- 
nassian summits.  This  fissure  is  called  Bear  Ravine  and 
forms  the  bed  of  a  torrent  originating  in  the  upper  region 
of  Parnassus. 

Castalia  itself  is  a  copious  pool  of  very  cool  and  pure 
water  at  the  foot  of  a  perpendicular  excavation  overhung 
with  ivy,  saxifrage  and  rock  plants,  around  which  grow 
some  larger  shrubs.  In  front  there  is  a  large  fig  tree,  and 
near  the  road  a  spreading  plane,  which  is  said  to  be  the 
only  one  in  Castri,  and  is  fabled  to  have  been  planted  by 
Agamemnon. 

Ancient  commendation  of  the  fountain's  water  is  con- 
firmed by  the  natives  who  consider  it  as  lighter,  more 
agreeable,  and  more  wholesome  than  the  water  of  Cas- 
sotis.  The  pool  is  not  only  kept  constantly  full  by 
subterranean  supplies,  but  affords  also  a  small  stream 
flowing  out  of  the  basin  into  the  bed  of  the  Arkud  horema. 
The  natural  pool  of  the  Castalian  Spring  was  enlarged, 
deepened,  and  made  more  commodius  in  ancient  times, 
by  an  excavation  in  the  rock,  both  vertically  and  hori- 


230  CENTRAL  GREECE 

zontally;  and  the  steps  to  it  seem  to  show  that  the  sub- 
terranean suppl}'  was  not  always  equal;  in  summer 
perhaps  not  reaching  above  the  lowest  steps,  but  filling 
the  basin  in  winter,  when  an  outlet  channel  at  the  back 
prevented  the  water  from  rising  above  the  upper  step. 
This  channel,  however,  no  longer  serves  its  original  pur- 
pose, the  Kastrites,  who  use  the  basin  for  washing 
clothes,  having  cut  an  opening  from  the  upper  steps,  so 
that  the  depth  of  water  in  the  basin  can  never  be  so  great 
as  it  was  anciently. 

The  present  chapel  of  St.  John  may  perhaps  occupy 
the  place  of  the  heroum  of  Autonous  which  is  described 
by  Herodotus  as  having  been  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Hyam- 
peia  near  the  fountain  of  Castalia. 

The  poet  Byron  who  visited  Greece  in  1809  wrote; 
"A  little  above  the  village  of  Castri  is  a  cave  supposed 
to  be  the  Pythian,  of  immense  depth;  the  upper  part  of  it 
is  paved  and  is  now  used  as  a  cow-house. 

"On  the  other  side  of  Castri  stands  a  monastery,  some 
way  above  which  is  a  cleft  in  the  rock  with  a  range 
of  caverns  difficult  of  ascent  and  apparently  leading  to 
the  interior  of  the  mountain,  probably  to  the  Corycian 
cavern.  From  this  part  descend  the  fountain  and  the 
dews  of  Castalia." 

One  of  the  poet's  companions  wrote;  "We  were 
sprinkled  with  the  spray  of  the  immortal  rill;  we  drank 
deep  of  the  Spring  but  without  feeling  sensible  of  any 
extraordinary  effect."  Later  on,  Byron  wrote;  "At 
Castri  we  drank  of  half  a  dozen  streamlets,  some  not  of 
the  purest,  before  we  decided  to  our  own  satisfaction 
which  was  the  true  Castalian,  and  even  that  had  a  vil- 
lainous tang,  probably  from  the  snow,  though  it  did  not 
throw  us  into  an  epic  fever  like  poor  Dr.  Chandler." 

Before  this,  however,  and  on  the  spot,  Byron  himself, 


:;  PHOCIS  231 

if  not  feverish  was  at  least  more  fervid,  for  he  wrote  some 
stanzas  of  "Childe  Harold"  at  the  Spring,  and,  seeing  a 
flight  of  twelve  eagles,  was  inclined  to  regard  it  as  an 
omen  propitious  to  his  future  career. 

There  was  a  laurel  tree  near  the  Spring  whose  leaves 
supplied  the  ordinary  decorations  for  the  temple  altar, 
but  when  large  quantities  were  required  they  were  pro- 
cured from  the  vale  of  Tempe,  and  Plutarch,  in  his 
"Dialogue  on  Music,"  gives  a  pleasant  picture  of  the 
youth  to  whom  this  duty  fell,  wending  his  way  always 
attended  by  a  player  on  the  flute. 

The  modern  method  by  which  a  languishing  maid, 
having  plucked  a  leaf,  secretly  reads  the  mind  of  an  un- 
certain youth,  as  the  leaf  grows  dull  or  bright  when  im- 
merged  in  a  Spring,  is  similar  to  a  mode  of  divination 
practiced  by  the  ancients,  an  instance  of  which  is  men- 
tioned in  the  history  of  the  Roman  Emperor  Hadrian 
who  went  to  consult  the  fountain  of  Castalia,  at  Daphne 
and,  plucking  a  leaf  from  its  laurel  tree,  dipped  it  into  the 
sacred  Spring. 

In  Shakespeare's  time  the  laurel  leaves  gave  equally 
momentous  messages,  as  is  indicated  in  "Richard  II.": 
where  the  Welsh  Captain  says  to  the  Earl  of  Salisbury ; — 
'"t  is  thought  the  King  is  dead,  we  will  not  stay;  the  bay 
trees  in  our  country  all  are  withered." 

Hence,  as  the  home  of  the  most  ancient  of  the  Sibyls, 
who  lived  before  the  time  of  the  Trojan  war,  was  by  the 
Castalian  Spring,  and  as  her  name  was  Daphne,  and  as 
one  Greek  word  means  both  Daphne  and  laurel,  it  might 
seem  as  though  the  first  of  the  fateful  and  much  prized 
leaves  of  the  Sibyls  were  those  that  were  plucked  from  the 
laurel  by  the  fountain  of  Castalia. 

Moore  writes  of  this  Spring  in  his  poem,  "From  the 
High  Priest  of  Apollo";— 


232  CENTRAL  GREECE 

"There  is  a  cave  beneath  the  steep, 
Where  living  rills  of  cry.stal  weep 
O'er  herbage  of  the  loveliest  hue 
That  ever  spring  begemmed  with  dew; 
There  oft  the  greensward's  glossy  tint 
Is  brightened  by  the  recent  print 
Of  many  a  Faun  and  Naiad's  feet — 
Scarce  touching  earth,  their  step  so  fleet — 
That  there,  by  moonlight's  ray  had  trod, 
In  light  dance,  o'er  the  verdant  sod." 

Castalia  is  supposed  by  some  authorities  to  be  the 
fountain  that  Homer  calls  Delphusa  in  his  Hymn  to 
Apollo. 

It  might  appear  indelicate  to  reflect  here  upon  the 
reputation  of  Castalia;  but  occasion  is  found,  when 
describing  Aganippe  and  pleading  that  justice  be  done  her, 
to  add  a  few  words  about  the  prevalent  fallacy  that 
Castalia  was  the  inspiring  fountain  of  the  Muses. 

Pausanias;  X.  8. 


165 

Cassotis 

The  fountain  of  Cassotis  was  a  little  north  of  the 
temple  of  Apollo  and  to  the  east  of  the  stone  that  Cronus 
swallowed  in  place  of  Zeus.  In  the  time  of  Pausanias, 
who  is  the  only  writer  who  uses  the  name  Cassotis,  the 
Spring  was  walled  in;  but  its  waters  ran  under  the  wall 
and  through  a  rocky  channel  into  the  vapor-exuding 
chasm  over  which  the  Pythia  sat  when  in  her  trances, 
which  is  perhaps  why  her  inspiration  came  to  be  at- 
tributed to  the  water  instead  of  as  originally  to  the 
chasm  vapor. 


PHOCIS  233 

At  present  Delphi  is  devoid  of  all  volcanic  vapors. 

The  Spring  received  its  name  from  one  of  the  nymphs 
of  Parnassus. 

Higher  up  on  the  hillside,  north  of  the  Spring,  there 
was  an  art  gallery  containing  paintings.  That  gallery 
was  called  The  Lounge  because  in  old  times  the  people 
of  Delphi  assembled  there  to  discuss  both  serious  and 
trifling  subjects.  Lounges  it  seems,  according  to  Homer, 
were  favorite  places  for  the  gathering  of  gossipy  Grecians ; 
in  the  rural  districts,  smithies  were  made  use  of  for  the 
same  purpose,  and,  in  both,  the  frequenters  were  wont  to 
refresh  themselves  with  naps  in  the  intervals  of  their  dis- 
cussions and  story  telling. 

Cassotis  was  for  a  time  identified  with  the  Spring  of 
Kerna  or  Krene;  but  later,  with  the  Spring  near  the 
church  of  St.  Nicolaus  where  there  are  some  remains  of 
an  old  wall;  while  the  water  that  springs  out  of  the 
ground  lower  down,  at  what  is  called  Hellenico,  is  sup- 
posed to  be  from  the  stream  that  was  formerly  conducted 
to  the  Pythia's  chasm,  and  which,  being  dammed  up  by 
debris  from  the  temple,  has  found  a  different  exit  for 
itself.  Owing  to  this  change  in  the  position  of  Cassotis, 
Kerna  is  now  supposed  to  be  the  fountain  anciently 
called  Delphusa,  although  some  authorities  consider  that 
Delphusa  was  the  name  by  which  Homer  knew  Castalia 
and  celebrated  it  in  his  Hymn  to  Apollo. 

Pausanias;  X.  24. 


166 

The  Corycian  Cave 

There  were  a  number  of  bubbling  Springs  in  the  Cory- 
cian cavern,  the  most  remarkable  of  all  caves  known 


234  CENTRAL  GREECE 

to  the  ancients,  and  of  all  of  them  the  best  worth  a 
visit. 

It  was  a  cave  on  Mt.  Parnassus  and  there  was  an  easy 
access  to  it  at  a  point  marked  by  a  brass  statue  sixty 
stadia  from  Delphi,  on  the  road  that  ran  from  that  town 
to  Parnassus.  It  was  200  feet  long  and  40  feet  high ;  and 
was  connected  with  a  side  cavern  about  half  as  large. 

One  of  the  ancient  approaches  to  it  was  by  a  continuous 
winding  flight  of  a  thousand  or  more  steps  cut  out  of  the 
rock  of  the  mountain  side. 

It  was  called  after  the  nymph  Corycia,  of  whom  Apollo 
was  once  enamored,  and  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the 
near-by  Pythian  Cave  which  was  in  very  early  days  the 
lair  of  the  long  and  awful  dragon  that  guarded  the  first, 
the  original  Oracle. 

The  Cavern  was  sacred  to  Pan  and  to  the  troop  of 
nymphs  attending  the  one  whose  name  it  bore. 

Above  it  rose  the  peak  of  Parnassus  that  pierced  the 
clouds,  the  one  on  which  the  Thyiades  indulged  in  their 
mad  revels  in  honor  of  Dionysus. 

The  cave  is  now  called  Sarant  Aulai,  or  Forty  Courts. 

Pausanias;  X.  33. 


167 

The  Crow's  Spring 

The  story  of  the  Crowds  Spring  is  connected  with  the 
most  colossal  artistic  conception  ever  formed  in  the 
human  mind — the  Grecian  concept  of  displaying  to  all 
the  world  in  imperishable  pictures,  on  limitless  space 
with  strokes  that  range  to  billions  of  miles  in  length,  the 
heroes  and  the  legends  of  Greece,  by  drawing  their  por- 
traits and  catchwords  on  the  heavens  themselves ;  using 


-  PHOCIS  235 

the  everlasting  stars  as  a  medium  and  linking  them 
together  with  lines  to  form  scintillating  figures  in  dazzling 
colors;  figures  of  such  mighty  magnitude  that  no  mind 
can  realize  the  vast  distances  between  the  starry  points 
with  which  the  drawings  are  made. 

Every  nation  in  history  has  cherished  these  marvelous 
portraits  and  paid  deference  to  the  immensity  of  their 
conception;  no  attempt  was  made  by  the  iconoclasts  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  nor  have  the  moderns  with  their  mania 
for  improvement  ever  sought  to  rob  the  pictures  of  their 
captions,  or  to  associate  them  with  stories  foreign  to 
those  that  they  were  drawn  to  illustrate. 

Some  of  the  pictures,  as  in  the  illustrations  for  the 
story  of  Andromeda  (see  No.  349)  cover  nearly  all  of  the 
characters  in  the  legend  they  portray.  So  do  the  pictures 
that  tell  the  story  of  the  Crow's  Spring;  which  tale  is  to 
the  effect  that  once,  when  Apollo  had  sent  the  bird  to  a 
Spring  for  sacrificial  water,  the  crow  seeing  on  a  tree  by 
the  fountain,  a  fig  that  was  almost  on  the  point  of  being 
perfectly  ripe,  perched  upon  a  limb  beside  the  tempting 
fruit  and  patiently  awaited  the  epicurean  stage  of 
maturity. 

Then,  having  enjoyed  the  fig  in  its  full  perfection,  the 
crow  filled  the  golden  cup  Apollo  had  given  it,  and,  snatch- 
ing a  stray  snake  in  one  of  its  claws,  flew  back  with  the 
truthless  excuse  that  the  innocent  snake  had  opposed 
approach  to  the  Spring  and  so  delayed  the  crow's  return. 

The  god  of  oracles,  angry  that  anyone  should  expect  to 
be  able  to  deceive  him,  at  once  seized  the  prevaricating 
bird,  cumbered  as  he  was  with  the  cup  and  the  snake,  and 
flung  the  trio  into  the  distant  sky,  saying,  as  he  did  so, 
that  never  again  should  that  crow  sip  a  cooling  drink 
from  any  Spring  till  figs  grew  ripe  before  the  fruit  was 
green. 


236  CENTRAL  GREECE 

This  immutable  picture  may  always  be  seen  in  the 
April  sky  just  above  the  southeastern  horizon,  the  crow 
with  one  foot  on  the  snake,  and  the  golden  cup  shining 
as  brightly  as  when  it  left  the  hand  of  Hephaestus  who 
formed  it. 

The  picture  continues  in  sight  during  May  and  June, 
and  then  disappears  in  the  southwest ;  the  crow  through- 
out his  passage  keeping  close  to  the  horizon  as  if  in  search 
of  Springs  and  figs  to  break  his  long-continued  fast. 

The  crow,  which  was  originally  a  white  bird,  was 
changed  to  black  on  another  occasion  because  he  brought 
Apollo  the  irritating  news  that  one  of  his  favorites,  Coro- 
nis,  had  married  Ischys. 

As  the  legend  of  this  constellation,  called  Corvus, 
though  replete  with  astronomical  detail,  does  not  mention 
the  site  of  the  Spring,  it  can  only  be  assumed  that  it  lay 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Apollo's  principal  shrine  and 
somewhere  near  Delphi  in  Phocis. 

Ovid.  Fasti;  II.    line  243. 


168 

CiRRHA 

From  the  effects  of  the  Salt  Spring  near  Cirrha,  the 
port  of  Delphi,  it  has  been  suggested  that  Solon  made 
use  of  its  waters  in  his  double  stratagem  by  which  the 
town  was  captured  when  besieged  by  the  Amphictyones 
in  595  B.C. 

The  Oracle  having  declared  that  Cirrha  would  not  be 
taken  until  the  sea  broke  into  the  Grove  of  Apollo,  which 
was  far  from  the  shore,  the  first  step  in  Solon's  strata- 
gem was  to  bring  the  grove  to  the  sea  by  consecrating  all 
of  the  intervening  land. 


PHocrs  237 

Having  thus  satisfied  the  Oracle's  conditions,  Solon 
then  made  a  new  channel  for  the  Castalia  fed  river 
Pleistus  that  watered  the  town,  and  saturated  it  with 
some  substance  of  a  relaxing  nature.  When  he  turned 
the  river  back  into  its  natural  bed  and  the  thirsty  people 
in  the  town  had  drunk  their  fill  to  make  up  for  recent 
privations,  they  were  all  seized  with  an  incessant  diar- 
rhoea that  reduced  them  to  such  a  state  of  weakness  that 
they  were  unable  to  continue  any  defense,  and  were 
obliged  to  surrender. 

As  the  water  of  the  Salt  Spring  had  the  same  effect 
that  the  treated  river  water  had,  it  has  been  suggested 
that  Solon  made  use  of  the  Spring  in  doctoring  the  river, 
although,  according  to  one  author,  hellebore  was  the 
substance  used  by  the  celebrated  law-giver. 

There  is  still  a  salty  Spring  near  Cirrha  and  its  water 
has  been  proved  to  have  the  same  effect  as  that  produced 
by  hellebore. 

Pausanias;  X.  37. 


169 

Hyampolis  Well 

Hyampolis  was  on  the  highroad  to  Opus.  Its  people 
had  only  one  well  to  supply  water  for  drinking  and  wash- 
ing and  the  needs  of  their  live  stock;  but  it  evidently 
produced  a  plentiful  and  a  wholesome  beverage,  as  even 
their  cattle  were  free  from  disease  and  were  more  fat  than 
neighboring  herds;  their  animals  were  sacred  to  Artemis. 

Hyampolis  was  a  very  old  town,  having  been  founded 
by  the  Hyantes,  whom  Cadmus  drove  out  of  Boeotia. 
They  were  a  courageous  people  given  to  employing  un- 
usual devices  against  their  enemies;  they  were  fertile  in 


238  CENTRAL  GREECE 

expedients  and  successfully  opposed  infantry  to  cavalry 
by  setting  earthware  pots  in  the  ground,  and  covering 
them  deceptively,  so  that  when  the  charge  was  made  the 
legs  of  the  animals  were  broken  and  the  troopers  were 
unhorsed  and  crushed  in  the  sprawling  mass. 

On  one  occasion,  five  hundred  of  them  practiced  a  ruse 
of  the  nature  of  Gideon's:  they  coated  themselves  with 
white  plaster,  and  at  dead  of  night,  when  the  moon  was 
shining,  they  rushed  among  the  sleeping  army  of  their 
enemies  who  were  put  to  flight  with  tremendous 
slaughter,  imagining  that  they  were  being  assaulted  by 
a  host  of  radiant  supernatural  beings. 

These  people  took  desperate  chances  to  secure  any 
object  they  had  in  view,  and,  when  they  were  about  to 
engage  in  battle  with  the  odds  greatly  against  them,  they 
prepared  beforehand  a  funeral  pile  on  which  to  burn  all 
of  the  survivors  in  case  of  defeat.  This  characteristic 
gave  rise  to  the  term  Phocian  Resolution  to  express  any 
desperate  resolve. 

The  ruins  of  Hyampolis  are  on  a  height  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  north  of  the  village  of  Vogdhani,  and,  from  the  side 
of  a  steep  rocky  bank  below  the  town,  a  Spring  continues 
to  pour  its  ample  supplies  into  an  ancient  stone  reservoir, 
the  Well,  that  served  all  the  requirements  of  the  people  of 
Homer's  Hyampolis. 

Herodotus;  VIII.  27. 
Pausanias;  X.  35. 


170 

Cephissus 

The  largest  river  of  Phocis  was  the  Cephissus. 
It  rose  at  Lilasa,  and  the  infant  stream,  as  if  conscious 
of  its  coming  prominence  as  the  giant  river  of  a  dwarf 


PHOCIS  239 

district,  announced  itself  with  lusty  roarings  like  those  of 
a  bull,  which  it  indulged  in  especially  at  midday. 

Lilaea  was  distant  from  Delphi  a  winter's  day's  journey, 
which  was  180  stadia.  It  had  a  theater,  market-place 
and  baths  which  were  no  doubt  supplied  by  the  noisy 
Cephissus. 

The  Cephissus  formed  Lake  Cephissus,  or  Copais, 
which  was  noted  for  the  fine  flavor  of  its  eels.  The  Lake 
was  five  miles  from  the  sea  and  between  them  there  inter- 
vened the  lower  reaches  of  Mt.  Ptotun,  under  which  the 
Lslke's  outlets  flowed  through  several  subterranean  pas- 
sages. These  outlets,  however,  were  at  times  inadequate, 
and  the  surrounding  country  was  frequently  damaged  by 
inundations;  therefore,  very  far  back  in  the  heroic  age 
two  additional  channels  were  constructed  with  engineer- 
ing ingenuity  that  compares  favorably  with  that  seen  in 
similar  works  of  the  most  modern  school.  One  of  the 
tunnels  was  a  rock-cut  channel  four  miles  long,  four 
feet  square,  and  from  a  hundred  to  one  hundred  and 
fifty  feet  below  the  surface,  from  which  ventilating 
shafts  were  driven  at  intervals  of  about  a  quarter  of 
a  mile. 

The  central  outlet  of  the  Lake  brought  the  waters  of  the 
Cephissus  to  sight  again  at  a  place  called  Anchoe,  whence 
it  flowed  sedately  in  a  broad  and  rapid  stream  for  a  mile 
and  a  quarter,  and  then  ran  into  the  sea  at  Lower  Lary- 
mna  on  the  confines  of  Boeotia  and  Locris. 

The  land  along  the  river  was  covered  with  farms  which 
were  the  best  in  the  district  both  for  planting  and  for 
pasture ;  and  the  banks  of  the  stream  were  frequented  by 
bustards.  The  tribe  of  the  Cephasias  took  its  name  from 
the  river. 

There  were  two  other  Springs  called  Cephissus;  one 
in  Lyrceum  of  Argolis;  and  another  in  the  gymnasitun  at 


240  CENTRAL  GREECE 

Apollonia  near  Epidamnus;  and  there  were  five  rivers 
that  bore  the  name  Cephissus. 

The  people  who  now  Hve  about  the  sources  of  the 
Cephissus  call  them  Kef alovryses ;  they  say  that  from 
time  to  time  the  waters  gush  out  with  an  increased  force, 
and  one  may  suppose  these  extra  efforts  account  for  the 
midday  roarings  of  former  days. 

Strabo;  IX.  3-    §  i6. 
Pausanias;  X.  33. 


171 

Panopeus 

About  twenty  stadia  from  Chaeronea  was  the  town  of 
Panopeus,  if  town  that  can  be  called,  says  the  old  chroni- 
cler, that  has  no  public  fountain. 

It  is  not  alone  on  account  of  this  striking  abnormality 
that  Panopeus  is  mentioned  here,  but  because  The  Foun- 
tain of  Youth,  that  for  ages  has  been  sought  in  the  most 
distant  and  unlikely  places,  must  have  been  not  far  from 
this  town  which  was  in  all  respects  a  most  gruesome  place 
situated  near  a  wild  ravine  that  was  the  scrap  heap  of 
creation,  the  refuse  pile  containing  what  was  left  over 
when  man  was  made  by  Prometheus;  this  discarded 
material  was  in  the  form  of  stones,  some  of  them  large 
enough  to  fill  a  cart.  They  were  of  the  color  of  clay,  and 
had  the  odor  of  the  human  body,  as  was  quite  nattual 
for  the  remains  of  the  material  from  which  the  human 
race  had  been  fashioned. 

In  this  neighborhood,  then,  must  have  been  that  foun- 
tain the  waters  of  which  gave  perpetual  youth  to — but 
perhaps  it  should  first  be  recalled  that  men,  in  the  Gre- 
cian scheme  of  creation  were  not  made  until  after  the 
brutes  which  were  so  lavishly  equipped  to  meet  the  con- 


PHOCIS  241 

tingencies  of  existence  that  there  was  nothing  left  to  give 
men  for  their  protection,  and  they,  therefore,  started 
life  naked  and  defenseless. 

Zeus,  who  had  entrusted  these  productions  to  others, 
at  once  noticed  the  poverty  of  men's  equipment,  and  in 
compassion  bestowed  on  them  the  gift  of  Preservation 
from  Old  Age. 

This  gift  was  placed  upon  an  ass,  which  seems  to  have 
been  a  beast  of  burden  from  the  moment  of  its  birth,  and, 
as  it  was  summer-time  and  hot,  and  the  ass  was  not  yet 
accustomed  to  work,  he  soon  became  exhausted  and  was 
in  a  pitiable  condition  from  thirst  when  he  spied  a  foun- 
tain, and  made  a  dash  for  its  brink.  He  was,  however, 
stopped  by  a  serpent  that  would  only  consent  to  allow 
him  a  drink  in  exchange  for  his  burden.  The  exchange 
was  made  gladly  and  quickly,  and  so  it  was  that  the 
waters  of  that  fountain  gave  to  the  snake  the  perpetual 
youth  which  was  first  bestowed  on  men;  and  all  the 
internal  evidence  in  the  account  indicates  that  the 
spring  could  not  have  been  at  any  great  distance  from 
Panopeus,  where  the  first  of  the  himian  race  was  made; 
and  the  superstitious  will  readily  credit  the  statement 
that  in  molding  the  material  it  was  moistened  with 
tears. 

Near  this  place  was  the  sepulchre  of  Tityus  which  was 
said  to  have  been  nine  rods  long.  And  less  than  a  mile 
away  was  Daulis;  it  had  the  gruesome  reputation  of 
being  the  place  where  cannibalism  first  occurred. 

The  legend  was  that  Tereus,  a  King  of  Daulis,  north- 
west of  Chasronea,  having  cut  out  the  tongue  of  his  wife 
Procne,  she  wove  an  account  of  the  matter  into  a  tapestry 
and  so  communicated  the  story  to  her  sister  Philomela; 
whereupon  the  two  killed  and  served  up  to  the  King  his 
infant  son.  The  gods  then  changed  them  all  into  birds, 
16 


242  CENTRAL  GREECE 

and  so  the  hawk,  Tereus,  constantly  pursues  the  swallow 
and  the  nightingale,  Procne  and  Philomela. 

And  beyond  Daulis  were  The  Cross  Roads,  the  spot 
where  CEdipus  murdered  his  father. 

Homer  speaks  of  the  people  of  Panopeus  as  delighting 
in  the  dance,  but  it  was  the  dissolute,  drunken  dance  that 
was  practiced  by  the  women  devotees  of  Dionysus. 

Panopeus  was  a  grandson  of  Psamathe  of  the  Argolis 
fountain;  temperamentally,  he  was  as  unattractive  as  his 
town;  he  quarreled  with  his  twin  brother  even  before 
they  were  born,  and  he  became  a  perjurer. 

He  was  the  father  of  Epeius  who  built  the  wooden 
horse  at  Troy  and  who  was  considered  to  be  one  of  the 
greatest  cowards  in  the  camp. 

A  place  called  Aio  Vlasi  now  represents  the  ancient  town. 

Pausanias;  X.  4. 
ApoUodorus;  I.  7. 


172 

Stiris 

^'  Stiris  was  120  stadia  from  Chaeronea;  it  was  on  high 
and  rocky  ground,  and,  for  lack  ot  piping  and  pumps  they 
had  to  travel  down  a  hill  for  half  a  mile  to  get  drinking 
water  from  a  Spring  whose  basin  was  hewn  out  of  the  rock, 
for  such  water  as  was  found  on  the  height  was  only  good 
enough  for  washing  purposes  and  to  give  their  cattle  drink. 

The  people  of  Stiris  were  primitive  and  their  temple 
was  of  unbaked  brick.  They  dyed  their  wool  with  the 
blood  of  a  small  grub  that  bred  in  a  nightshade-like  berry 
of  the  Coccus,  a  bramble  that  grew  in  the  plain;  the  grub, 
when  the  fruit  was  ripe,  became  a  gnat  and  flew  away. 

There  is  a  monastery  of  St.  Luke,  within  a  mile  of  the 
ruins  of  Stiris,  now  called  Palea-khora,  and  its  location 


PHOCIS  243 

indicates  that  the  history  of  the  water  toils  of  the  people 
on  the  hilltop  was  not  written  in  vain;  for  the  rock  of  the 
Stiris  Spring  was  made  a  part  of  the  monastery  wall,  and 
an  inscription  outside  refers  to  the  fountain  and  an- 
nounces that  it  is  now  within  the  monastery. 

Pausanias;  X.  35- 


Saunion 

The  Well  named  Saunion  was  in  the  town  of  Bulls  in 
Phocis,  near  the  border  of  Boeotia,  where  a  mountain 
torrent  called  by  the  natives  "Hercules'"  fell  into  the 
Gulf  of  Corinth;  the  place  was  loo  stadia  by  water  from 
Anticyra. 

The  people  of  Bulis  helped  to  rob  the  temple  at  Delphi 
in  the  time  of  Philomelus,  and  they  do  not  appear  to  have 
been  much  more  advanced  than  those  of  Stiris.  Like 
them,  they  were  engaged  in  producing  dyes  which  they, 
however,  made  from  a  shellfish  that  more  than  half  of 
the  inhabitants  were  employed  in  catching.  The  dye  was 
of  a  purple  hue,  as  was  that  the  Phoenicians  made  from 
their  shellfish. 

They  had  no  buildings  to  excite  admiration,  and  their 
statues  were  of  wood  and  by  unknown  makers. 

More  fortunate,  however,  than  the  people  of  Stiris, 
they  had  a  good  Well  of  sufficient  presence  to  receive  a 
name,  and  they  called  it  Saunion,  perhaps  from  some  inci- 
dent connected  with  a  javelin,  which  is  the  meaning  of 
that  word. 

The  location  of  Bulis  has  been  identified  by  its  torrent. 
It  is  in  a  deserted  district,  a  mile  from  the  solitary  mon- 
astery of  Dobo. 

Pausanias;  X.  37* 


^TOLIA 

174 
Callirrhoe 

The  Spring  of  Callirrhoe  in  the  city  of  Calydon 
^toha,  commemorates  the  cause  of  a  minor  misfortune 
of  the  citizens,  second  only  to  the  trials  they  underwent 
through  the  ravages  of  the  Calydonian  boar,  from  which 
they  were  delivered  by  Meleager. 

Callirrhoe,  a  name  that  is  pleasant  enough  to  the  eye 
and  to  the  ear,  seems  nearly  always,  however,  to  have 
been  coupled  with  calamity,  and  it  has  fallen  into  dis- 
favor in  modern  nomenclature. 

That  daughter  of  Ocean  who  bore  it  saw  deformity  in 
her  progeny  and  became  the  mother  of  Geryon,  the  three- 
headed  monster;  the  half -serpent,  flesh-eating.  Echidna; 
Pluto's  dog  Cerberus;  the  Hydra;  the  Chimsera;  the 
Sphinx ;  and  many  other  misshappen  horrors. 

Another  unfortunate  of  the  same  name,  a  grand- 
daughter of  Argos  from  whom  Greece  received  one  of 
its  appellations,  was  a  sister  of  the  uncouth  Argus 
of  a  hundred  eyes  which  were  inherited  by  the  gaudy 
peacock. 

Thrace,  that,  except  for  a  short  period,  has  always  been 
one  of  the  most  disreputable  countries  of  the  earth,  re- 
ceived one  of  its  early  designations  from  Biston,  and  he 
was  a  son  of  Callirrhoe  and  Mars. 

Still  another  Callirrhoe  was  even  more  unfortunate; 
she,  a  daughter  of  Scamander,  was  wife  of  King  Troas 

244 


^TOLIA  245 

and  became  the  mother  of  the  most  beautiful  boy  among 
mortals,  only  to  see  him  carried  away  by  an  eagle  to  be 
made  the  cup  bearer  of  Jupiter.  A  pair  of  divine  horses 
is  said  to  have  been  given  to  console  her  for  the  loss  of 
her  lovely  child,  Ganymedes,  who  was,  later,  placed 
among  the  constellations  under  the  name  of  Aquarius — 
these  were,  however,  attempts  at  consolation  that  would 
only  make  many  mothers  detest  the  sight  of  horses  and 
stars  for  ever  afterwards. 

The  malign  influence  continued  in  her  family,  as  is 
well  known  in  the  misfortunes  of  her  grandson  Anchises 
and  his  son  ^Eneas. 

The  miseries  of  the  daughter  of  Inachus  who  was 
changed  into  a  white  cow  by  Zeus,  and  then  forced  by  a 
fretting  gadfly  to  flee  over  half  the  earth,  are  the  miseries 
of  one  of  the  first  Callirrhoes  under  her  second  and  more 
widely  known  name  of  lo. 

And  she  of  the  same  name,  the  daughter  of  Achelous, 
who  married  Amphiaraus'  son,  Alcmason,  was  the  cause 
of  his  death  through  her  coveting  the  necklace  of  Cad- 
mus' wife,  Harmonia. 

Poor  Callirrhoe  of  Calydon,  however,  was  never 
married;  nevertheless  even  her  maidenhood  did  not  avail 
to  preserve  her  from  the  apparent  spell  of  the  name,  or 
from  the  passion  of  the  Priest  Coresus. 

Having  failed  by  all  tolerable  means  to  arouse  a  recip- 
rocal regard  for  himself,  he,  apparently,  adopted  a  policy 
of  terrorism,  for  ntimbers  of  the  citizens  became  affected 
with  a  sudden deliriimi,  "insane  with  drink, "  that  ended 
in  death. 

This  peculiar  epidemic  is  suggestive  of  the  agency  of 
poison,  perhaps  even  conveyed  through  the  Spring  itself, 
but  the  crafty  Priest  caused  it  to  be  believed  that  it  was 
an  exhibition  of  the  favor  with  which  his  god  Dionysus 


246  CENTRAL  GREECE 

regarded  him,  and  an  indication  of  the  deity's  disapproval 
of  Callirrhoe's  disdain. 

The  afflicted  people  thereupon  sent  hot-footed  to  con- 
sult the  oracle  at  Dodona,  where  the  lover's  fellow 
Priests,  following  suit  to  his  lead,  confirmed  the  delusion, 
and  even  added  that  the  scourge  would  not  be  stayed 
until  Coresus  had  sacrificed  Callirrhoe,  or — not  merely 
someone  else,  but — a  victim  who  should  volunteer  to  be 
deprived  of  life  in  her  stead. 

On  hearing  of  this  decision,  the  young  girl  attempted 
to  conceal  herself  among  her  friends,  and  the  wide- 
spread fear  of  the  citizens  is  indicated  by  the  refusal 
of  even  her  most  intimate  associates  to  give  her  asy- 
lum, or  make  any  effort  to  preserve  her  life.  She  was 
driven,  therefore,  to  present  herself  at  the  altar  for 
sacrifice. 

This  unexpected  ending  of  all  Coresus'  schemes,  thrust 
suddenly  before  him  in  public,  allowed  him  no  time 
to  consider  new  schemes  or  further  complications,  and, 
convinced  that  all  his  plans  and  plottings  had  gone  for 
naught,  he,  in  a  moment  of  desperation  and  despair, 
turned  the  sacrificial  knife  upon  himself  and  expired  at 
his  victim's  feet. 

Callirrhoe,  looking  upon  the  act  as  a  proof  of  his  love, 
and  in  her  pity  implicating  herself  as  the  cause  of  the 
tragedy,  disconsolately  descended  the  holy  terrace  to  the 
Spring,  and  there  enacted  another  tragedy  on  the  lines 
of  the  one  at  the  altar,  and  cut  her  own  fair  and  blameless 
throat — and  the  Spring  from  that  time,  by  common  con- 
sent, was  called  by  her  name. 

The  Spring  was  situated  near  the  harbor,  and  thus 
became  a  sight  and  an  object  of  interest  for  land  and 
water  voyagers  to  and  from  the  town,  and  so  its  story, 
Dassing  through  many  minds  and  mouths,  to  other  lands 


^TOLIA  247 

and  ages,  has  been  softened  by  time  and  the  poets,  and 
one  must  read  between  the  hnes  to  learn  of  the  guilt, 
deceit  and  villainy  that  was  engendered  by  that  simple 
maid  of  Calydon,  whose  friends  were  less  faithful  than 
her  city's  shoreside  Spring,  the  waters  of  which  nourished 
her  during  life,  and,  receiving  her  last  conscious  look,  con- 
tinued through  many  centuries  to  keep  her  memory  green 
and  preserve  her  sad  episode  from  oblivion. 

A  modern  version  of  the  misfortune  of  the  Calydonian 
Callirrhoe  appears  in  a  drama,  with  her  name  as  the 
title,  by  Miss  Bradley  under  the  pseudonym  of  Michael 
Field. 

There  were  two  other  Callirrhoes,  a  daughter  of  Tethys ; 
and  another,  a  daughter  of  Lycus  a  king  of  Lycia.  The 
former  was  one  of  the  3000  taper-ankled  Oceanides  of 
whose  history  nothing  is  known;  and  of  the  latter  little 
more  is  recorded  than  that  she  saved  the  life  of  Diomedes 
when  he  was  returning  from  Troy  with  the  Palladium, 
the  talisman  of  Troy  and  afterwards  of  Rome ;  it  had  been 
found  by  Ilus,  another  son  of  Callirrhoe  the  mother  of 
Ganymede,  and  its  history  definitely  locates  the  abodes 
of  the  gods  and  gives  additional  interest  to  every  glance 
at  the  sky's  galaxy  whose  innumerable  lights  are  the  glow 
that  streams  from  the  grounds  and  the  marble  palaces 
of  the  deities  that  are  built  about  the  "coal  sack," 
through  which  the  Palladium  fell.  That  talisman  was  a 
small  wooden  image  of  Pallas,  a  friend  of  the  goddess 
Minerva,  which,  accidently  knocked  from  its  resting- 
place,  rolled  to  the  edge  and  dropped  off  to  land  on  the 
plain  near  Troy. 

Calydon,  which  in  prehistoric  times  was  the  ornament 
of  Greece,  had  sunk  into  insignificance  two  thousand 
years  ago,  and  now  even  its  situation  is  disputed. 

The    .^tolian   seacoast,    too,    has    undergone   many 


248  CENTRAL  GREECE 

changes,  and  Callirrhoe's  Spring  near  the  harbor  is  now 
perhaps  in  the  bed  of  the  sea. 

Fausanias;  VII.  21. 


Orea 

The  fountain  of  Orea,  a  lofty  mountain  in  JEtoMa, 
though  not  itself  The  Fount  of  Immortality  might  easily 
have  satisfied  a  not  too  exacting  seeker  in  quest  of  that 
long-sought  Spring,  for  there  grew  around  it  the  grass 
called  Agrostis.  It  was  the  grass  of  the  gods,  sown  by 
Saturn,  and  made  those  who  eat  it  immortal.  The  steeds 
of  the  Sun  were  fed  upon  it  and  were  thereby  enabled  to 
pursue  their  ceaseless  round  without  stopping  and  with- 
out fatigue. 

The  grass  was  indigenous  to  the  Isles  of  the  Blest,  but 
a  small  bed  of  it  was  accidently  discovered  by  Glaucus 
while  chasing  a  hare  on  Mt.  Orea.  The  hunter  was  on  the 
point  of  capturing  the  animal  which,  exhausted  by  a  long 
pursuit,  had  fallen  down  and  rolled  over  in  the  grass  by 
the  border  of  the  Spring,  when,  greatly  to  Glaucus' 
surprise,  the  hare  seemed  to  almost  instantly  recover 
its  full  vigor  and,  darting  away  from  under  his  hand, 
made  good  its  escape. 

Glaucus'  deductions  from  this  unexpected  ending  of 
the  chase  led  him  to  examine  the  grass,  and  then  to  eat 
some  of  it;  whereupon  his  sensations  clearly  made  him 
aware  that  he  had  become  immortal,  as  time  proved  to 
be  the  case. 

He  found  himself  changed  in  body  and  in  mind  and  he 
longed  to  change  his  surroundings  as  well,  which  he  did 
by  leaping  into  the  sea  and  swimming  to  Sicily,  where  he 
fell  in  love  with  Galatea  of  the  Spring  of  Acis. 


^TOLIA  249 

Glaucus  was  a  son  of  Neptune  and  was  one  of  those 
who  successfully  contributed  to  the  consolation  of 
Ariadne,  after  her  desertion  by  Theseus.  He  was  one  of 
the  builders  of  the  ship  Argo,  and  became  its  Quarter- 
master, and  was  the  only  one  of  the  ship's  complement 
that  did  not  at  some  time  during  the  voyage  receive  an 
injury. 

There  is  still  a  grass  called  Agrostis  Vulgaris  which 
may  be  readily  recognized  by  its  lanceolate  glumes  which 
though  very  thin  are  firmer  than  its  palets ;  there  is,  how- 
ever, nothing  by  which  the  Spring,  if  seen,  could  be  recog- 
nized— nor  even  the  mountain,  unless  Corax  was  the  one 
that  Athenseus  had  in  mind. 

Athenaus;  VII.  47.     VII.  48. 


176 

Hyrie 

The  tears  of  the  mother  of  Cycnus  formed  the  Spring 
that  was  called  by  her  name,  Hyrie. 

Cycnus,  a  pretty  and  greatly  admired  boy,  having  been 
refused  a  prize  bull  that  he  asked  Phyllius,  one  of  his 
admirers,  to  give  him,  threw  himself  in  angry  disappoint- 
ment from  a  lofty  rock. 

In  the  course  of  his  descent  he  was  changed  into  a  swan, 
by  his  father  Apollo,  and  flew  away  uninjured. 

The  mother,  knowing  of  the  leap  but  unaware  of 
the  transformation,  dissolved  in  tears  and  formed  the 
Spring. 

The  tear-made  fount  is  seen  at  the  foot  of  a  steep  moun- 
tain, and  it  makes  a  lake  the  outlet  of  which  is  the  river 
Cyathus,  a  tributary  of  the  Achelous. 

Ovid.  Meta.  VII.    Fable  3. 


250  CENTRAL  GREECE 

177 
Phana 

The  story  of  the  Spring  and  the  siege  of  Phana  are 
slightly  suggestive  of  that  of  Bethulia  in  the  Bible. 

Phana  was  a  fenced  village,  of  the  ^^tolians,  and  had 
only  one  Spring,  which  was  outside  of  the  fence.  The 
Ach£eans,  having  besieged  the  village  for  a  long  time  with- 
out making  any  progress,  sent  to  the  oracle  at  Delphi  to 
ask  for  suggestions  that  would  make  their  campaign  a 
success;  and  when  the  Temple's  Board  of  Strategy  ad- 
vised that  they  find  out  how  much  water  the  inhabitants 
needed  daily  to  keep  themselves  alive,  the  besiegers, 
unable  to  see  the  drift  of  the  response,  decided  to  give  up 
their  object  and  return  home. 

The  villagers,  noticing  the  preparations  for  departure, 
became  lax,  and  a  woman  issuing  from  the  gate  to  get 
water  was  captured  in  the  act.  From  her  the  Achaeans 
learned  that  the  only  water  the  people  had  was  obtained 
from  this  Spring,  usually  under  cover  of  darkness,  and 
that  it  was  carefully  measured  out  for  the  next  day's  use. 

The  besiegers  then  concluded  to  wait  a  few  days  longer, 
and  meantime  made  the  water  undrinkable,  with  the 
result  that  the  defenders  surrendered  rather  than  perish 
of  thirst. 

Phana  is  presumed  to  have  been  near  Arsinoe,  a  place  at 
or  about  the  junction  of  the  Cyathus  and  Achelous  rivers. 

Pausanias;  X.  18. 


178 

Mt.  Taphiassus'  Spring 

There  was  a  Spring  in  the  southeastern  part  of  ^Etolia 
in  a  tract  that  once  belonged  to  the  Ozolae  or  Bad  Smell- 


^TOLIA  251 

ing  Locrians,  who  were  so  designated  because  of  the 
stench  their  fountain  emitted. 

It  rose  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Taphiassus,  near  the  town  of 
Macynia,  and  contained  clots  of  blood  that  made  it  as 
unpleasant  to  the  sight  as  it  was  to  smell;  these  are  not 
found  in  the  water  today;  but  it  still  retains  the  fetid 
odor  of  ancient  times. 

The  smell  and  the  particles  were  attributed  to  the 
proximity  of  the  poisoned  body  of  the  Centaur  Nessus 
whose  grave  on  the  mountain  side  was  marked  with  an 
identifying  monument,  for  he  had  served  many  travelers 
and  people  of  the  neighborhood  in  ferrying  them  for  a 
modest  fee  across  the  ^tolian  river  Evenus,  once  called 
Lycormas,  either  pickaback  or  in  his  arms.  Nessus  was 
the  son  of  Ixion  who,  after  receiving  signal  favors  from 
Zeus,  affronted  his  wife  Hera,  and  was  therefore  punished 
in  his  progeny,  who  were  the  Centaurs  and  the  Hippo- 
centaurs,  the  former  having  the  hind  legs  and  the  latter 
all  the  four  legs  of  a  horse.  Afterwards  in  the  lower 
world  Ixion,  while  bound  to  a  constantly  turning  wheel, 
was  continually  scourged,  and  made  to  repeat,  "Bene- 
factors should  be  Honored." 

Nessus  was  shot  with  one  of  the  Hydra  poisoned  arrows 
of  Hercules,  who,  having  hired  him  to  carry  over  his  wife 
Dejaneira,  was  made  jealously  angry  by  the  ferryman's 
manner  of  holding  her. 

Nessus  was  not  the  only  victim  of  that  shot.  He  ad- 
vised Dejaneira  to  save  some  of  the  blood  that  dripped 
from  his  wound  and  assured  her  that  it  would  keep  her 
husband  from  loving  any  other  woman. 

Sometime  later,  Dejaneira,  having  use  for  the  charm, 
sprinkled  a  shirt  of  the  hero  with  the  fluid  or  its  powder, 
and  the  poison,  absorbed  through  the  skin  when  Hercules 
put  on  the  garment,  brought  about  the  end  of  his  earthly 


252  CENTRAL  GREECE 

career,  fortunately  without  contaminating  any  Springs, 
for  he  was  carried  up  in  a  cloud  to  the  home  of  the  gods 
where,  as  an  immortal,  he  married  Hebe. 

Dejaneira  hanged  herself  in  a  fit  of  grief  when  the  un- 
expected effect  of  the  false  philter  was  seen  at  the  waters 
of  Dyras.     (See  No.  195.) 

Mt.  Taphiassus  is  called  Kakiskula  at  the  present  time. 

Strabo;  IX.  4.    §8. 


ACARNANIA 

179 

Cren^ 

The  place  called  Crenae,  or,  The  Wells,  seems  to  have 
received  the  name  from  some  Springs  near  the  city  of 
Argos  that  was  in  a  small  district  of  northeastern  Acar- 
nania  called  Amphilochia. 

The  site  of  this  Argos  has  not  yet  been  definitively 
determined,  but  some  lagoons  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Armyro  are  supposed  to  be  the  work  of  the  Springs  that 
were  called  The  Wells. 

These  were  close  to  the  sea  at  the  point  where  the 
Inachus  river,  now  the  Ariadha,  started  out  on  its  long 
ocean  voyage  to  the  Peloponnesus,  as  related  of  the  source 
of  the  Inachus  in  Argolis. 

ThucydidesjIII.  106. 


253 


EAST  LOCRIS 

1 80 
Thermopylae 

The  warmth  of  the  saHne  Springs  in  the  celebrated 
Pass  gave  it  the  name  of  Thermopylae  centuries  before 
480  B.C.,  when  Leonidas  made  it  a  cosmic  word. 

They  are  said  to  have  been  called  forth  by  Athena  to 
please  Hercules,  with  whose  name  a  number  of  warm 
Springs  are  associated. 

There  were  two  Springs  about  600  feet  apart,  and  their 
hot  and  sulphurous  waters  were  of  a  dark  blue  color,  the 
most  beautiful  of  all  blue  waters. 

When,  in  spite  of  the  prediction  of  failure  that  the 
diviner  Megistias  had  made,  the  hero's  little  band  at- 
tempted to  hold  the  hosts  of  Persians  under  Xerxes,  these 
Springs  played  no  unimportant  part  in  the  defense,  and 
performed  greater  though  less  pyrotechnical  prodigies 
than  the  Spring  of  Ausonia  when  it  came  to  the  assistance 
of  Rome. 

They  copiously  overflowed  the  narrow  roadway, 
making  the  rocks  slippery,  and  converting  the  ground 
into  a  slough  through  which  perhaps  the  Persians  would 
never  have  managed  to  flounder,  had  it  not  been  for  the 
treachery  of  the  Trachinian  Ephialtes  in  guiding  a  body 
of  the  enemy  by  a  secret  path  through  a  narrow  defile 
that  brought  them  around  at  the  rear  of  the  defenders, 
who  were  then  crushed  as  in  the  jaws  of  a  closing  vise. 

In  later  years  when,  in  279  B.C.,  the  Gallati  under 

254 


EAST  LOCRIS  255 

Brennus  made  their  invasion,  and  not  only  followed  the 
plan  of  the  Persians  on  land  but  sent  a  fleet  through  the 
Lamiac  Gulf  that  ran  at  the  side  of  the  Pass,  the  Springs, 
in  their  eagerness  to  aid  the  Athenian  forces  that  emu- 
lated Leonidas,  rushed  into  the  Gulf  with  their  assistance, 
and  threw  into  it  such  volumes  of  oozy  mud  that  the 
rowers  of  the  vessels,  heavy  with  men  and  equipment, 
succeeded  only  by  the  greatest  exertion  in  propelling 
their  boats  through  the  thickened  sea. 

Then,  even  as  the  Stars  in  their  courses  did  fight  against 
Sisera,  the  Mountains  aided  the  Greeks  and  prevented 
the  Gallati  from  stealing  the  treasures  of  the  temple  at 
Delphi.  Thus  Parnassus,  supplementing  the  efforts  of 
the  Springs,  shook  its  holy  head  and  rocky  sides  in  rage, 
and  hurled  upon  the  heads  of  the  invaders  such  a  heavy 
barrage  of  stones  and  bowlders  that,  with  the  added 
assistance  of  the  Lightning  which  killed  some  of  the 
enemy  and  blinded  others,  they  fled  in  terror  and  aban- 
doned the  invasion. 

Strabo;  IX.  4-    i  13- 
Pausanias;  I.  4. 


181 

The  Fountain  of  .^anis 

Near  Cynus,  in  a  leafy  grove  called  .^aneium,  there 
was  a  fountain  named  after  .^anis  who  was  accidentally 
killed  by  Patroclus  during  a  game  at  dice;  fountain  sides, 
as  seen  at  Corinth  and  elsewhere,  having  been  favorite 
locations  for  playing  games  of  chance  or  skill,  and  even 
for  the  sites  of  oracles  whose  divinations  were  made  by 
means  of  tali,  the  ancient  ancestors  of  modern  dice. 

The  accidental  killing  of  people  during  sports  and 
games  seems  to  have  been  a  hereditary  fatality  in  the 


256  CENTRAL  GREECE 

family  of  Patroclus;  his  uncle  Telamon  killed  his  own 
brother  Phocus  while  playing  at  quoits  with  him ;  and  his 
father  Peleus  killed  his  father-in-law,  Eurytion,  while 
they  were  chasing  the  Calydonian  boar. 

Patroclus  himself  lost  his  life  during  the  Trojan  war, 
killed  by  Hector  while  fighting  in  the  borrowed  armor  of 
his  friend  Achilles ;  a  death  that  resulted  in  the  capture 
of  the  city  of  Troy,  if  there  was  truth  in  the  prediction, 
of  the  seer  Calchas  that  the  town  could  not  be  taken 
without  the  cooperation  of  Achilles;  for  at  the  death  of 
Patroclus  he  was  roused  from  his  fit  of  the  sulks  and 
immediately  returned  to  the  fighting  line  to  avenge  the 
fall  of  his  friend,  who  had  atoned  for  the  mysterious 
death  of  ^anis. 

Cvnus  was  opposite  the  Spring  of  .^depsus  in  Euboea ; 
Deucalion  and  Pyrrha  were  among  its  residents  and  it 
contained  the  tomb  of  Pyrrha. 

Str3bo;IX.  4.   $2. 


NORTHERN  GREECE 

EPIRUS 

182 
The  Achelous 

In  the  southern  prolongation  of  the  Balkan  range  that 
is  called  Mt.  Pindus,  and  at  Chalcis  now  Khalika,  the 
Achelous,  the  largest  river  of  Greece,  had  its  rise;  and  the 
spot  where  it  appeared  marked  the  scene  of  a  touching 
e?chibition  of  maternal  love  and  filial  trust. 

Achelous,  the  son  of  Gsa,  was  the  father  of  those  three 
lovely  singers  the  Sirens  Ligeia,  Leucosia,  and  Parthenope 
after  whom  Naples,  near  which  she  was  buried,  was 
formerly  called.  They  have  long  been  wantonly  aspersed 
by  unwarrantably  stigmatizing  every  false  charmer  as 
one  of  their  kind;  for  they  were  good  at  heart  and  sym- 
pathetic and  unselfish,  as  was  shown  in  their  begging 
to  be  given  wings  in  order  that  they  might  search  farther 
and  more  widely  for  the  missing  daughter  of  Ceres. 
Even  if  one  cares  to  accept  the  other  story  that  Venus 
placed  wings  on  them  to  mark  her  displeasure,  the  Sirens 
must  receive  all  the  more  credit,  in  that  they  submitted 
to  the  wings  rather  than  for  a  moment  abate  a  jot  in  their 
views  about  virtue. 

The  whole  life  of  the  Sirens  illustrates  the  value  and 

effect  of  incentive.     Doubtless  there  were  myriads  of 

maidens  in  Greece  who  possessed  natural  abilities  to 

sing  that  equaled  and  perhaps  in  some  cases  surpassed 

17  257 


258  NORTHERN  GREECE 

these  of  the  Sirens;  but  not  being  constrained  to  sing, 
those  maidens  are  now  unknown.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  very  existence  of  the  Sirens  depended  upon  their 
singing,  and  singing  so  well  and  so  sweetly  that  they 
should  always  hold  their  audiences  and  never  lose  a 
listener. 

As  was  so  often  the  case  with  people  of  Mythology,  the 
Sirens'  lives  were  overshadowed  with  a  doom  pronounced 
when  they  were  born.  Meleager  knew  not  at  what 
moment  the  hidden  brand  snatched  from  the  fire  at  his 
birth  might  again  be  set  alight  and  bring  about  his  death, 
and  many  others  lived  in  hourly  expectation  of  the 
happening  of  some  event  they  knew  portended  their  end. 

The  Sirens  were  aware  that  if  ever  a  hearer  passed  by 
unmoved  by  their  song,  that  would  be  their  death  war- 
rant ;  and  it  was,  therefore,  not  to  draw  others  from  the 
path  of  duty  by  their  singing  that  they  sang,  but  to  pre- 
serve their  own  existence. 

The  birth  of  the  Spring  of  the  Achelous  gives  additional 
proof  of  the  goodness  of  the  Sirens,  in  its  testimony  that 
they  had  endeared  themselves  to  their  father  more  deeply 
than  bad  daughters  ever  could  have.  ' » " 

It  may  be  a  question  whether  it  was  Orpheus'  finer 
vocal  efforts,  closing  the  ears  of  the  Argo's  crew  to  the 
song  of  the  Sirens,  or  Odysseus'  wax-filled  ears,  that 
brought  about  the  trio's  tragic  drowning;  but  it  was 
either  during  the  Argonauts'  trip,  or  on  the  return  from 
Troy,  that  the  Sirens  succumbed  to  the  event  that  was 
originally  set  as  marking  the  limit  of  their  lives,  and 
threw  themselves  into  the  sea. 

Achelous,  after  he  was  informed  of  the  loss  of  his 
daughters,  suffered  a  sorrow  so  profound  that,  with  a 
childlike  faith  in  his  mother's  consolation,  he  cried  aloud 
for  her  presence;  and  there,  on  that  spot  where  his  mother 


EPIRUS        ■■•'1  259 

heard  the  cry  and  gathered  him  to  her  bosom,  she  caused 
the  river  Achelous  to  spring  forth  to  mark  the  overflowing 
of  her  heart  at  the  manhood  yearning  of  her  son  for  her 
sympathy  and  support. 

The  greatness  of  the  mother's  heart  is  not  the  least 
touching  feature  in  this  episode  of  all-round  family  affec- 
tion, when  it  is  recalled  that,  including  Achelous,  the 
godly  Gsea  had  three  thousand  sons. 

The  river  was  as  white  as  the  man,  a  characteristic  so 
marked  that  even  the  unsentimental  moderns  wove  it 
into  the  name  Aspropotamos,  the  White  River,  by  which 
it  is  now  known  from  its  source  to  the  Ionian  Sea. 

It  was,  moreover,  the  earliest  active  agent  in  the 
cause  of  temperance ;  the  first  attempts  to  dilute  wine  and 
lessen  its  evil  effects  having  been  made  with  its  waters. 

Georgics;  I.  9-  and  Servius'  Com. 


183 

Athamanis 

This  wonderful  fountain  was  in  Dodona,  a  grove  that 
adjoined  a  town  of  the  same  name  in  the  district  of  Chao- 
nia  near  the  river  Achelous. 

The  grove  was  sacred  to  Zeus  and  received  its  name 
either  from  a  daughter  of  that  god  and  Europa,  or  from 
an  Asiatic  goddess  named  Dione. 

Dodona  contained  one  of  the  three  most  celebrated 
shrines  of  ancient  superstition,  the  extent  of  whose  re- 
ligious fame  was  rivaled  by  their  wealth,  though  probably 
the  latter  equaled  only  a  small  part  of  the  aggregate 
sum  spent  on  private  fortune  tellers  of  various  kinds  in 
the  XXth  century,  by  people  who  number  their  dwell- 
ings 1 1 3^  or  I  lA  when  they  own  the  house  between  Nos, 


26o  NORTHERN  GREECE 

II  and  15;  and  who  rent  offices  in  buildings  that  have  no 
floor  nor  room  between  the  twelfth  and  the  fourteenth. 

The  waters  of  this  Spring  were  said  to  kindle  wood 
when  applied  to  it  at  such  times  as  the  waning  moon  had 
shrunk  into  her  smallest  orb. 

In  the  grove  was  a  temple  to  Jupiter  and  an  oracle 
which  enjoyed  a  greater  reputation  in  Greece  than  any 
other  save  that  at  Delphi.  While  its  surroundings  were, 
probably  not  as  overpowering  as  those  of  Delphi,  with 
its  deep  and  dark  caverns  and  the  elaborateness  of  its 
rites,  Dodona  had  enough  of  its  own  pecuHar  profundities 
to  inspire  its  patrons  with  a  full  sense  of  its  omniscience 
and  greatness,  and  its  oracular  responses  were  made  with 
so  many  concomitant  mysteries  that  the  exact  manner 
in  which  the  divine  information  was  communicated  was 
probably  the  most  tantalizing  mystery  of  the  whole 
proceeding. 

There  were  oak  trees,  one  of  them  the  second  oldest 
tree  in  the  world,  and  doves  and  brazen  appliances,  and 
the  murmuring  Spring  with  its  miraculous  pyrotechnical 
properties;  and  the  priests  were  no  doubt  quite  content 
that  each  suppliant's  imagination  should  have  free  play 
in  trying  to  decide  whether  oak,  dove,  brass  or  spring 
made  the  sound  that  revealed  the  god's  responses  to  the 
attendant  translators. 

Possibly  the  most  popular  theory  was  that  which 
makes  the  "Talking  Oaks"  a  familiar  expression  even 
today.  According  to  this  surmise,  the  two  old  women 
who  interpreted  the  oracles  were  supposed  to  divine  the 
will  of  the  god  by  the  sounds  the  wind  made  in  rustling 
the  leaves  on  the  branches  of  the  trees,  whose  prophetic 
powers  continued  even  after  they  were  felled  and  fash- 
ioned by  the  carpenter  for  useful  purposes.  Thus,  the 
mast  of  the  ship  Argo,  of  the  Argonauts,  which  was  cut 


EPIRUS  261 

from  the  grove  by  this  Spring,  delivered  oracles  to  Jason 
in  times  of  necessity  during  his  voyage  in  search  of  the 
Golden  Fleece  of  the  ram  upon  which  Phrixus  escaped 
from  his  angry  father,  Athamas.  ^schylus  calls  the  oak 
of  Dodona  "that  wonder  of  the  world,  the  language  gifted 
oak."  And  Sophocles,  in  his  play,  "The  Trachinian 
Maidens, "  makes  Hercules  speak  of  the  oracles  that  were 
delivered  to  him  in  Dodona  "by  the  mystic  tongues 
innumerous  of  my  father's  sacred  tree." 

In  another  passage  in  the  same  play,  however,  it  is 
stated  that  the  proclamation  was  made  by  the  an- 
cient oak  tree  "through  the  sacred  doves,"  whence, 
perhaps,  arose  the  assertion  that  the  Priestesses,  who 
succeeded  the  original  Priests,  the  Selli,  were  called 
Doves.  According  to  others,  the  original  nymphs  of 
Dodona  were  the  nurses  of  Bacchus  whom  Jupiter  placed 
in  the  sky  where  they  are  now  seen  as  the  Hyades,  to 
preserve  them  from  Juno's  anger  against  Semele  and 
her  assistants. 

Lucan,  on  the  other  hand,  speaks  of  "The  brass  of 
Jove" ;  and  Stephanus  Byzantinus  specifically  states  that 
in  that  part  of  the  forest  where  the  oracle  stood  there 
were  two  pillars  erected  at  a  small  distance  from  each 
other;  on  one  there  was  placed  a  brazen  vessel  about  the 
size  of  an  ordinary  cauldron,  and  on  the  other  a  little  boy, 
probably  a  piece  of  mechanism,  who  held  a  brazen  whip 
with  several  thongs  which  hung  loose  and  were  easily 
moved.  When  the  wind  blew,  the  lashes  struck  against 
the  vessel  and  occasioned  a  noise  while  the  wind  con- 
tinued. Byzantinus  even  says  that  it  was  from  these 
that  the  forest  took  the  name  of  Dodona;  "dodo," 
in  the  ancient  language  ,of  the  vicinity,  signifying  a 
cauldron.  - 

Others  say  that  brass  vessels  were  suspended  to  the 


262  NORTHERN  GREECE 

branches  of  the  trees,  which,  being  set  in  motion  by 
the  wind,  came  in  contact  with  each  other  and  made 
the  sounds  that  revealed  the  will  of  the  divinity. 

Servius,  however,  relates,  more  naturally,  that  at  the 
foot  of  the  sacred  oak,  the  oldest  tree  but  one  in  all  Hellas, 
the  willow  of  the  temple  of  Hera  in  Samos  being  the  old- 
est, there  was  a  fountain  the  sound  of  whose  waters  was 
prophetic  and  was  interpreted  by  the  Priestesses,  and  it 
would  seem  surprising  that  the  waters  of  this  ever  mur- 
muring fountain  were  not  generally  accepted  as  the  real 
media  through  which  the  oracles  were  transmitted,  at 
least  when  the  winds  and  the  birds  were  silent,  if  not  on 
all  other  occasions. 

Unfortunately  it  has  so  far  been  difficult  to  locate  the 
Spring  of  Athamanis,  for  Theopompus  says  there  were  a 
hundred  fountains  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Tomarus  where 
Dodona  is  supposed  to  have  stood,  and  it  is  rather  re- 
markable that  its  site  is  the  only  place  of  great  celebrity 
in  Greece  of  which  the  situation  is  not  exactly  known  in 
modern  times.  Leake  supposes  that  the  ruins  on  the  hill 
of  Kastritza,  at  the  southern  end  of  the  lake  of  loannina, 
are  those  of  the  ancient  city,  but  this  inference  has  been 
challenged  by  others. 

Doubtless  after  900  B.C.  there  was  a  Dodona  in  this 
neighborhood,  brought  down  when  the  Muses  and  all  of 
their  surroundings  were  moved  from  the  northeast,  but 
before  that  migration  it  was  in  Thessaly,  as  Homer  dis- 
tinctly states. 

The  poet  Lucan  who  was  born  38  a.d.,  refers,  as  before 
mentioned,  to  the  oracle,  though  it  had  been  long  extinct 
before  his  time,  for  in  the  year  B.C.  219  the  temple  was 
destroyed  by  the  ^Etolians,  and  the  sacred  oaks  were  cut 
down.  Hadrian,  however,  is  supposed  to  have  rebuilt  it 
between  117  and  133  a.d. 


EPIRUS  263 

This  fire-kindling  fountain  was  so  far  from  being  hot 
itself  that  it  was  ice-cold. 

At  noon  it  became  dry;  at  midnight  it  was  full;  and 
from  this  ebb  and  flow  which  alternated  constantly,  day 
by  day,  it  was  sometimes  called  Anapauomenon.  It  is 
also  referred  to  as  the  fountain  of  Jupiter. 

Pliny;  II.  106.    IV.  i.    Iliad;  II.  line  941, 


184 

Lyncestis 

The  town  of  Lyncus  in  Epirus  possessed  a  Spring  that 
should  have  made  wine  selling  in  that  neighborhood  a 
precarious  and  unprofitable  business. 

The  river  Lyncestis  was  the  stream  of  the  town  and 
its  source  was  reputed  to  give  such  people  as  drank  of  it 
immoderately  all  the  symptoms  of  a  prolonged  session 
with  the  bottle;  thickened  speech,  the  hiccoughs  and  a 
staggering  gait,  all  lurked  in  that  wine-like  fountain. 

Dr.  Brown  has  identified  this  Spring  with  one  of 
mineral,  acidulous  water  which  he  found  near  Banitza 
on  the  road  from  Filiarina. 

Pliny;  II.  106. 


The  Royal  Waters 

The  Spring  known  as  The  Royal  Waters  issued  forth 
in  the  Acroceraunian  mountains  under  the  fortress  of 
Chimaera. 

These  mountains  were  in  the  northern  part  of  Epirus, 
and  received  their  name  from  the  frequency  of  thunder 
storms  in  their  vicinity.    They  are  now  called  Chimasra 


264  NORTHERN  GREECE 

after  an  ancient  fortress  which  is  itself  represented  by 
the  modern  settlement  called  Khimera.  This  was  diagon- 
ally opposite  the  northern  end  of  Corcyra  island. 

Pliny;  IV.  i. 


i86 
Chimerium 

Pausanias  says  that  there  was  fresh  water  coming  up 
out  of  the  sea  at  a  place  called  Chimerium  in  Thesprotia, 
and  that  it  was  similar  to  the  sweet  water  Spring  of  Dine 
in  the  sea  off  the  coast  of  Argolis. 

Chimerium  was  the  name  of  a  promontory  and  of  a 
harbor  between  the  rivers  Acheron  and  Thyamis;  the 
place  was  diagonally  opposite  the  southern  end  of  the 
island  of  Corcyra. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  7. 


ILLYRICUM 

187 
Apollonia 

There  was  a  fountain  in  Illyricum  which  set  garments 
on  fire  if  they  were  spread  over  it.  This  was  probably  the 
fountain,  near  Apollonia,  that  the  same  author  says,  in 
another  place,  was  near  the  Nymphaeum,  and  was  always 
burning,  and  which  threw  out  bitumen  that  mixed  with 
the  water  of  the  fountain.  The  Nymphasum  is  described 
by  Strabo  as  being  a  rock  that  emitted  fire,  and  he  says 
that  the  Springs  below  it  flowed  with  hot  water  and  with 
jasphaltus,  a  combination  that  explains  why  the  garments 
were  set  on  fire. 

The  town  of  Apollonia  was  near  Dyrrachium  and  was 
the  western  end  of  the  great  military  road,  the  Via  Egna- 
tia,  made  about  168  B.C.,  which  ran  eastward  through 
lUyria,  Macedonia  and  Thrace,  for  a  distance  of  nearly 
550  miles,  to  Cypsela,  every  mile  of  the  way  being  marked 
by  a  pillar. 

There  are  practically  no  remains  of  Apollonia  now,  and 
there  is  no  modern  mention  of  any  fire-containing  rocks 
in  the  neighborhood,  although  underlying  beds  of  mineral 
pitch  still  abound  in  Albania  and  Dalmatia,  the  modern 
designations  of  Illyricum. 

Pliny;  II.  lo6. 


265 


THESSALY 

i88 
Thessaly 

Thessaly  was  the  cradle  of  Greece;  there  the  infant 
nation  was  deposited  although  the  parents  were  foreign 
born ;  the  Greeks  themselves  could  not  agree  as  to  their 
origin,  and  modern  discussion  has  failed  to  bring  har- 
mony out  of  the  age-old  discord. 

But  by  reading  the  records  of  the  rocks  during  the 
XlXth  century  information  was  gradually  acquired  re- 
garding the  Great  Ice  Age  which  seems  to  throw  a  new 
light  upon  the  subject,  and  to  simplify  any  discussion 
about  Greek  and  Roman  origin,  by  eliminating  the  west 
of  Europe,  above  the  40th  parallel  of  latitude,  which  was 
reached  by  the  enormous  ice-sheet  that  probably  anni- 
hilated mankind,  north  of  that  line,  as  suddenly  as  the 
mammoths  were  overwhelmed  in  the  snow  and  ice-banks 
that  for  thousands  of  years  preserved  their  flesh  as  fresh 
as  it  was  at  the  time  of  the  catastrophe. 

Owing  to  mountains  and  isothermal  causes  the  south- 
ern edge  of  the  ice-cap  did  not  form  a  straight  line  along 
the  40th  parallel,  as  is  shown  by  the  curving  mark 
that  it  left  between  the  40th  degree  and  several  lower 
down;  but  even  looking  along  the  40th  parallel  it  is 
apparent  that  when  the  ice-cap  retreated  there  was 
practically  no  place  from  which  a  new  population  could 
have  come  except  Asia  and  the  south ;  and  it  was  said 
of  old  that  those  from  the  south,  from  Phoenicia  and 

266 


THESSALY  267 

Egypt,  did  not  go  north  until  in  times  comparatively- 
recent. 

The  Scandinavian  account  of  the  Ice  Well  Hvergelmeer 
whose  waters  froze,  layer  upon  layer,  and  of  the  beginning 
of  life  in  the  north  when  beings,  a  man  and  a  cow,  emerged 
from  the  mists  that  rose  above  the  layers  when  at  last 
they  started  to  melt,  is  a  thumb-nail  and  graphic  descrip- 
tion of  what  no  doubt  occurred  in  and  after  the  last  Ice 
Age,  and  it  pictures  the  southward  progress  of  the  great 
glacier  and  its  subsequent  melting,  and  what  would  have 
seemed  to  be,  had  any  old  inhabitant  been  left  to  note  it, 
the  advent  of  new  life,  as  the  first  pioneer  of  the  migration 
drove  someone's  cow  through  the  vapor  and  into  the 
lands  recently  vacated  by  the  ice  king ;  for  it  seems  plaus- 
ible to  suppose  that  a  congestion  of  population,  resulting 
from  long  confinement  within  narrow  limits  by  the  lofty 
ice  barrier,  was  followed  by  a  natural  migration  north- 
ward, when  such  became  practicable  after  the  icy  mass 
had  dissolved  and  drained  into  the  inland  seas  of  Europe, 
and  the  great  lakes  of  America  that  cleared  morasses 
such  as  in  a  previous  ice  age  overwhelmed  the  prehistoric 
animals  that  formed  the  present  zoos  in  stone  of  Arizona 
and  Alberta. 

One  may  judge,  from  the  rivers  that  gush  from  the 
glaciers  of  today,  what  oceans  of  water  poured  from  the 
glacial  age  glacier,  and  what  a  continuous  flood  ensued 
during  the  centuries  that  were  required  to  totally  melt  its 
length  of  thousands  of  miles  and  its  depth  of  hundreds  of 
feet. 

A  glance  at  the  map  shows  that  Thrace  offered  the 
easiest  passage  upward  from  Asia  into  Europe  and  thence 
across  the  continent  to  the  Atlantic  coast,  and  the  view 
that  that  passage  was  used  is  confirmed  by  finding  in 
the  adjoining  district  of  Thessaly  the  earliest  people  of 


268  NORTHERN  GREECE 

Greece  who  were  not  aborigines,  that  is,  the  descendants 
of  Hellen  who  gave  Greece  its  classical  name,  for  Graecia 
is  only  a  name  that  the  Romans,  for  some  unknown 
reason,  gave  to  that  country. 

Homer  spoke  of  Greece,  in  part,  as  Hellas,  the  land  of 
the  descendants  of  Hellen,  very  suggestively  called  the 
first  man  born  after  the  flood,  and  in  part,  as  the  land  of' 
the  Argives,  who  were  Aborigines,  and  of  the  Danai, 
who  were  Egyptians. 

Hellas  was  at  first  only  a  small  district  in  Thessaly, 
which  began  on  the  fateful  40th  parallel,  but  from  there 
the  Hellenes  slowly  spread  over  all  Greece  with  the  ex- 
ception of  the  Peloponnesus,  and  perhaps  Epirus. 

Looking  at  the  map  of  Asia  Minor,  it  is  seen  that  Phry- 
gia,  with  its  tip  grazing  the  40th  parallel,  was  its  most 
northerly  ice-free  country,  and  consequently  the  logical 
exit  for  an  exodus,  and,  in  effect,  the  only  place  from 
which  the  Hellenes  could  have  come ;  and  it  is  interesting 
in  this  connection  to  find  that  the  legendary  Pelops,  after 
whom  the  Peloponnesus  was  named,  is  distinctly  said  to 
have  come  from  Phrygia.  * 

Moreover,  Phrygian  words  appeared  in  the  language 
of  early  Greece,  and  names  of  places  were  common  to 
both  countries. 

Doubtless  it  will  never  be  possible  to  trace  the  Grecians 
farther  back  than  this,  for,  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Phry- 
gians themselves  it  would  be  hazardous  to  give  even  a 
guess.  They  stretch  back  into  the  utter  darkness  of 
antiquity.  The  Egyptians  with  a  chronology  of  more 
than  25,000  years  admitted  that  Phrygia  was  older  than 
Egypt;  they  even  said  that  the  Phrygian  was  the  first 
language  spoken,  as  was  attested  by  the  fact  that  the 
first  word  infants  utter,  if  they  have  not  heard  human ^ 
speech,  is  the  Phrygian  word  for  bread,  a  proof  that 


THESSALY  269 

any  doubting  parent  may  still  very  easily  put  to  the 
test. 

Grecian  tradition  carried  the  starting-point  of  the  early 
migration  no  farther  south  than  Phrygia ;  but  the  pent-up 
masses  below  the  icy  line  no  doubt  surged  up  and  out  in 
many  waves  of  bands  that  spread  in  numerous  directions, 
some  forced  or  attracted  to  the  west,  and  the  north,  and 
the  east,  and  others  to  the  south  where  they  formed  the 
first  of  the  occupants  of  upper  Greece  and  Italy  of  legen- 
dary times,  and  repeopled  those  countries  of  whose  pre- 
glacial  inhabitants  not  even  legend  has  ever  breathed  a 
whisper,  unless  indeed  their  descendants  were  the  in- 
habitants the  Greeks  called  Autochthons  (aborigines) 
who  were  found  near  the  38th  parallel  and  who  may  have 
survived  the  ice  age  (as  possibly  those  did  who  were 
south  of  the  tip  of  the  devouring  ice  tongue  in  Italy)  in 
the  very  small  fragment  of  the  Peloponnesus  that  lies 
under  the  40th  degree. 

The  Autochthons  above  the  38th  parallel  were  the 
people  of  Ogygus,  the  Autochthon  of  Boeotia,  who  died 
off  with  some  pestilence,  and  whose  lands  were  repeopled 
by  the  Hyantes  and  others  who  were  in  possession  when 
Cadmus  arrived. 

Pelasgus,  the  Autochthon  of  Argos  and  Arcadia,  lived 
below  the  38th  parallel — he  was  the  father  of  Lycaon — 
out  from  its  being  said  that  he  was  the  first  to  "settle" 
in  Arcadia  and  that  he  showed  how  to  construct  huts  as 
protection  against  the  weather,  and  how  to  make  gar- 
ments, and  raised  the  standard  of  eating  from  roots  and 
grass  to  acorns,  in  addition  to  his  being  mentioned  also  as 
in  Thessaly,  it  would  seem  that  he  was  not  indigenous 
but  possibly  one  of  the  Phrygian  migrators  who  came  to 
Arcadia  and  found  others  already  there,  and  improved 
their  living  conditions. 


270  NORTHERN  GREECE 

These  Autochthons  were  designated  Pelasgi  (storks) 
and  are  said  to  have  been  so  called  because  they  flitted 
from  place  to  place,  though  perhaps  those  birds  are  more 
suggestive  of  waders  which  the  Autochthons  probably 
were,  by  reason  of  the  marshy  land  the  melting  ice  made 
in  their  neighborhood  around  the  38th  parallel. 

It  would  be  to  little  purpose  to  speculate  how  many 
thousands  of  years  ago  that  migration  of  the  uncouth 
began,  or  how  long  it  had  continued  before  a  higher  order 
of  people  followed,  such  as  Pelops  from  Phrygia  with 
ideas  even  above  the  improved  acorn  food  of  Pelasgus; 
and  such  as  Orpheus  also  from  Phrygia,  with  ideas  of 
melody  and  of  rhythmic  motion,  and  of  composition, 
though  then  perhaps  only  vocal. 

Legend  places  the  era  of  Pelasgus  in  the  nineteenth 
generation  before  the  Trojan  war,  and  Orpheus  was 
perhaps  not  far  distant  from  him,  in  introducing  the 
gentle  arts  into  Thrace  and  forming  a  peaceful  and  pros- 
perous civilization,  whose  peoples'  cows  and  other  prop- 
erty doubtless  in  the  end  attracted  the  descendants  of 
the  ruder  pioneers,  the  first  people  who  went  up  out  of 
Asia,  vagabond  classes  who,  seeking  release  from  the 
confinement  and  privations  that  had  pressed  most  heavily 
upon  them  in  the  south,  were  not  likely  to  have  turned 
south  again  when  passing  through  Thrace  at  the  outset, 
people  who  originated  the  barbarous  tribes  of  the  north 
who  were  always  a  source  of  mystery  and  fear,  and  who, 
occupied  in  seeking  food  and  in  defending  their  lives,  had 
neither  leisure,  inclination  nor  ability  to  leave  their 
progeny  the  story  of  their  origin  and  travels;  these,  de- 
scending from  the  north,  drove  the  peaceful  and  prosper- 
ous Thracians  farther  to  the  south  where,  in  Boeotia,  they 
reestablished  themselves  and  gave  the  Boeotian  moun- 
tains and  streams  and  other  natural  features  the  names 


THESSALY  271 

of  those  from  which  they  had  been  driven,  and  continued 
to  associate  them  as  closely  as  in  Thrace  with  their  re- 
Jigious  rites,  and  their  histories  of  the  gods. 

The  route  from  the  starting-point,  in  Phrygia,  may  no 
doubt  still  be  traced  by  many  names  and  monuments 
that  providentially  have  been  preserved,  monuments  the 
most  mighty  and  prominent  of  which  are  the  mmierous 
peaks  called  after  the  Phrygian  Mt.  Olympus,  the  last 
and  most  westerly  one  being  that  in  the  territory  of 
Grecian  Elis. 

These  names  cannot  be  marks  made  on  the  return 
route  of  the  Phrygians,  their  so-called  migration  into  Asia, 
for  not  only  was  that  a  flight,  but  it  occurred  after  the 
Trojan  war  or  within  the  century  before  that  war."* 

The  Phoenicians,  and  the  Egyptians  who  came  across 
to  Greece  by  water,  added  to  the  number  of  the  Grecians' 
divinities,  and  gave  a  broader  base  to  their  education  by 
introducing  the  material  gifts  of  writing;  the  sciences  of 
mathematics  and  astronomy;  and  art;  all  of  which,  in 
combination  with  the  minor  gods,  among  whom  were 
Aphrodite  who  was  first  worshiped  by  the  Assyrians  and 
then  by  the  Phoenicians,  and  the  lighter  spiritual  presents 
of  music,  romance  and  poetry  brought  from  the  east  by 
Orpheus  and  others,  were  mingled,  and  cemented  a 
foundation  for  the  civilization  that  was  raised  to  its 
greatest  height  shortly  before  the  Christian  era — a  civili- 
zation that  was  perfected  within  about  the  same  ntmiber 
of  centuries  that  covered  the  growth  of  Britain  from 
painted  savagery  to  Queen  Victoria. 

Long  before  the  retreat  of  the  Ice  Cap  afforded  a 
northern  outlet,  a  southern  exit  was  doubtless  sought  by 
the  pent-up  peoples  in  Asia;  and  it  may  be  noted  as 
testimony  from  another  source  regarding  the  starting- 
point  of  the  migration  of  a  part  of  the  people,  that  an 


272  NORTHERN  GREECE 

Arab  tradition,  in  connection  with  the  Koran,  pointed  to 
the  fecund  40th  parallel  nearly  one  and  a  half  thousand 
years  before  the  wavering  line  of  discursive  text,  written 
in  icy  characters  on  the  rocks  and  in  the  gravels,  had  been 
connectedly  deciphered;  a  tradition  that  designated  the 
resting  place  in  Armenia  of  Noah's  Ark,  the  Bibhcal 
cradle  of  the  new  and  present  human  race,  in  which  the 
parti-colored  brothers  were  saved  from  the  flood,  which 
the  melting  ice  alone  might  have  caused ;  and  the  particu- 
lar mountain  that  supported  the  cradle,  whether  it  is  set 
down  as  Ararat  or  under  some  other  name,  is  found  within 
a  few  miles  of  where  the  41st  meridian  crosses  the  40th 
parallel. 

'  Apollodorus;  I.  7-    5  *• 
>  Strabo;  VII.  7.    5  i- 

3  Herodotus;  II.  2. 

4  Strabo;  XIV.  S-  29. 


189 

Hypereia 

Around  the  pellucid  and  celebrated  fountain  of  Hy- 
pereia Jason's  uncle  Pheres  built  the  town  of  Pherae. 

That  founder  became  the  father  of  King  Admetus  who 
enjoyed  the  unique  distinction  of  nimibering  a  god  among 
his  slaves,  during  the  twelve  months  that  Jupiter  sen- 
tenced Apollo  to  servitude,  for  slaying  the  Cyclops  who 
forged  the  bolt  that  killed  ^sculapius. 

This  Spring  is  the  one  referred  to  by  Hector  in  the  Iliad 
when,  in  his  painful  parting  with  Andromache,  he  ex- 
presses a  number  of  pessimistic  fears  about  the  future  and 
says,  rather  inconsiderately,  that  he  foresees  her  a  weep- 
ing captive  forced  to  fetch  weights  of  water  from  Messeis 
or  Hypereia,  both  of  which  were  near  the  tomb  of  Hellen 
the  son  of  Deucalion  and  his  wife  Pyrrha  who  repeopled 


THESSALY  273 

the  earth,  after  the  deluge,  with  stones  that  when  thrown 
behind  them  became  human  beings. 
•  Such  remains  of  the  city  of  Pheras  as  may  still  be  traced 
are  found  about  the  village  of  Velestino  where  Hypereia 
continues  to  flow,  the  waters  gushing  out  from  several 
openings  in  a  rock  on  the  southern  side  of  a  mountain  that 
overhangs  the  village,  and  immediately  mingling  to  form 
a  considerable  stream  which  has  been  described  as  ex- 
panding into  a  shallow  lake  of  crystal  purity  one  hundred 
yards  in  diameter,  which  is  crossed  by  means  of  stepping 
stones. 

Strabo;  IX.  5.    §  18. 
Iliad;  Bk.  VI. 


190 

Messeis 

The  fountain  of  Messeis,  mentioned  by  Hector  as  one 
of  the  Springs  from  which  his  wife  might  be  forced  as 
a  slave  to  carry  quantities  of  water  for  his  conquerors, 
is  supposed  to  have  been  in  the  town  of  Pheree  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  more  renowned  fountain  of  Hjrpereia. 

Strabo;  IX.  s-    5  6. 


I9I-I92 

Cerona.     Neleus 

The  Springs  of  Cerona  and  Neleus  might  have  given 
rise  to  the  expression  "dyed  in  the  wool, "  as  their  prin- 
cipal features  of  interest  were  the  effects  that  their  waters 
produced  in  the  color  of  the  sheep  that  drank  them. 

The  fleeces  of  such  as  used  the  first  fountain  were 
turned  black;  and  those  of  the  animals  that  drank  the 
waters  of  the  Neleus  were  made  white.        _,.,..       ■......■■ 

18 


274  NORTHERN  GREECE 

It  followed,  naturally,  that  those  impartial  sheep  who 
drank  of  both  Springs  acquired  mottled  fleeces. 

The  Cereus  and  the  Neleus  in  Euboea,  and  the  Crathis 
and  the  Sybaris  in  Magna  Graecia,  produced  the  same 
effects,  except  for  the  mottling.  But  streams  with  these 
peculiar  properties  became  increasingly  common  and  have 
ceased  to  be  noteworthy  now  that  they  are  found  in 
all  countries,  so  that  sheep  raised  anywhere  in  the  world, 
whatever  their  original  color  may  have  been,  become  as  a 
rule  either  white  or  black. 

Strabo;  X.  i.    §  14. 


Peneus 

The  Peneus  rose  in  Mt.  Pindus  near  Gomphi  in  the 
western  part  of  Thessaly  and  ran  to  the  east  some  sixty 
miles  to  reach  the  sea. 

It  passed  between  Mts.  Olympus  and  Ossa  and  during 
five  miles  of  its  journey  it  loitered  in  a  charming  vale  that 
was  once  a  lake,  the  vale  of  Tempe,  where,  its  surface, 
silvered  with  the  light  reflected  from  its  bed  of  bright 
pebbles,  mirrored  the  brilliant  tints  of  the  enclosing 
mountains,  and  the  many  shades  of  the  verdant  herbage 
bordering  its  banks.  While  the  eye  delighted  in  this 
constant  play  of  harmonious  colors,  the  ear  was  no  less 
ravished  by  the  music  of  melodious  birds  that  made  their 
home  in  the  beautiful  valley. 

The  pleasantly  environed  Peneus  received  many  tribu- 
taries in  its  passage  to  the  sea;  but  when  the  dreadful 
waters  of  the  Titaresius  attempted  to  join  the  happy 
throng  the  Peneus  refused  to  receive  them  or  to  permit 
them  to  mingle  with  its  merry  current,  and  it  held  them 


THESSALY  275 

aloof  so  that  they  seemed  to  be  borne  up  by  its  silvery 
surface,  like  oil,  and  after  a  short  distance  it  rejected  them 
entirely,  as  waters  devoted  to  penal  sufferings  and  en- 
gendered for  the  Furies. 


194 

TiTARESIUS 

The  ostensible  source  of  the  Titaresius  was  in  Mt. 
Titarus  in  the  northern  part  of  Thessaly,  where  its 
Spring  was  surrounded  with  carobs,  the  ill-omened  trees 
on  one  of  which  Judas  Iscariot  hanged  himself,  but  it  was 
believed  to  be  tainted  with  the  hidden  waters  of  the  Styx 
which  made  it  repugnant  not  only  to  men  but  even  to  the 
Peneus,  as  shown  in  its  refusing  to  blend  with  them. 

So  much,  however,  do  impressions  depend  upon  a 
point  of  view  that  there  were  some  people  who  offered  a 
very  different  reason  for  the  fact  that  the  waters  kept 
apart  while  traversing  the  same  channel.  To  them  it 
seemed  as  if  the  Titaresius  disdained  to  touch  the  waters 
of  the  Peneus  and  passed  over  them  as  though  gliding 
through  dry  fields;  and  they  averred  that,  conscious 
and  proud  of  its  relationship  with  the  deities  of  the  lower 
world,  it  desired  to  preserve  veneration  for  itself,  and  was 
unable  to  endure  contact  with  an  ignoble  stream  such  as 
it  considered  the  Peneus  which  could  claim  only  an  earth- 
born  origin.  They  even  went  further,  and  threw  mud  at 
the  Peneus;  or,  at  any  rate,  they  said  it  was  a  muddy 
stream  and  not  a  shining  river  as  it  was  described  to  be 
by  its  admirers  who  affirmed  that  it  was  superior  to  all 
others  in  celebrity. 

The  Peneus,  as  now  known  under  the  name  of  Salam- 
bria,   includes   what   seems  to  have   formerly   been  a 


276  NORTHERN  GREECE 

tributary  rising  considerably  north  of  Gomphi.  The 
Titaresius  is  now  the  Xerghi;  of  old  it  was  called  indif- 
ferently Europas,  Eurotas,  Horcus  and  Orcus. 

Strabo;IX.  s.    §20.     Frag.  14.     (Peneus.) 
Strabo;  Fragment  14.     (Titaresius.) 


Dyras 

The  waters  of  Dyras  rose  in  mistaking  kindness  to 
extinguish  the  flames  in  which  Hercules  was  about  to 
immolate  himself  to  escape  the  terrible  pains  of  his  last 
mortal  hours. 

His  flirtation  with  lole,  the  daughter  of  Eurytus  of 
CEchalia,  reminded  the  hero's  wife  Dejaneira  of  the  love 
philter  furnished  by  Nessus  near  the  Spring  of  Mt. 
Taphiassus,  and  she  made  use  of  it  to  steep  in  the  fluid 
an  undergarment  which,  as  soon  as  Hercules  had  put  it 
on,  clung  to  his  cuticle,  and  inoculated  him  with  the 
poison  of  the  arrow  with  which  he  had  slain  Nessus,  a 
poison  that  had  permeated  the  amorous  ferryman's 
blood  of  which  the  philter  was  largely  composed.  (See 
No.  178.) 

Made  frantic  by  the  pain  of  the  poison,  Hercules  tore 
off  the  garment,  and  with  it  large  masses  of  flesh  to  which 
it  had  adhered,  and  made  one  single  wound  that  covered 
his  whole  raw  body.  Driven  to  distraction  with  rage  and 
agony,  he  forced  a  passing  shepherd,  Poeas,  to  assist  in 
building  a  furnace  of  wood  from  Mt.  CEta,  and  im- 
mediately threw  himself  into  the  center  of  the  roaring 
flames. 

It  was  then  that  the  kindly  disposed  waters  of  Dyras 
gushed  up  to  extinguish  the  blaze,  not  knowing  that  the 
hero  was  destined  to  be  snatched  from  the  pyre  by  a 


THESSALY  277 

thunder  filled  cloud  and  carried  up  to  Olympus,  to  become 
immortal  and  marry  Hebe  the  daughter  of  Hera. 

The  waters  that  sprang  up  with  such  merciful  inten- 
tions continue  to  flow  as  the  Gargo  River. 

Herodotus;  VII.  198. 


196 

Cranon 

The  waters  of  certain  hot  Springs  at  Cranon  possessed 
the  rare  quality  of  thermos  bottles,  for  when  put  in 
vessels  of  wine  they  kept  the  mixture  warm  for  three 
days. 

Perhaps  they  tempered  the  wine  for  the  banquet  the 
tyrant  Scopas  gave  at  Cranon,  during  which  Castor  and 
Pollux  paid  the  poet  Simonides  the  share  Scopas  had 
ironically  assigned  to  them  for  a  poem  the  poet  recited 
at  the  dinner  in  eulogy  of  the  tyrant,  who,  being  pro- 
voked at  an  incidental  reference  to  the  twins,  peevishly 
declared  he  would  pay  only  half  the  stipulated  price  for 
the  eulogy,  and  that  perhaps  Castor  and  Pollux  would 
settle  for  the  remainder. 

Almost  immediately  a  messenger  informed  Simonides 
that  two  young  men  desired  to  see  him  outside,  and  on 
leaving  the  hall  and  the  building,  to  meet  them,  the  roof 
fell  in  and  buried  Scopas  and  all  his  company. 

The  poet,  who  considered  himself  more  than  paid  for 
his  eulogy  by  his  narrow  escape,  lived  until  467  B.C. 
having  reached  his  89th  year.  He  is  sometimes  numbered 
among  the  Seven  Wise  Men,  and  is  said  to  have  been  the 
first  inventor  of  a  memory  system. 

The  margins  of  the  Springs  were  covered  with  in- 
crustations due  to  some  chemical  action  of  the  water 


278  NORTHERN  GREECE 

which   may  have  had  to   do   with   its   heat-retaining 
properties. 

The  ruins  of  Cranon  have  been  located  a  few  miles 
from  the  city  of  Larissa. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  17. 


197 

Pagas^ 

The  port  of  Pagasae  was  given  that  name  because  of 
the  number  of  Springs  about  it,  Pagai  that  in  another 
language  would  have  made  the  name  Springport. 

It  was  the  naval  arsenal  of  Pherae,  the  home  of  King 
Admetus  and  Homer's  fountains  Hypereia  and  Messeis; 
and  next  to  it  was  the  harbor  of  Aphetas  the  starting- 
point  of  the  Golden  Fleece  expedition  of  the  Argonauts. 

A  slightly  salty  flavor  in  the  water  of  the  Springs  fur- 
nished an  outlet  for  the  aqueduct  building  rage  of  the 
Romans,  and  in  the  time  of  their  jurisdiction  water  was 
brought  to  Pagasae  from  a  distance  over  a  structure  whose 
remains  are  still  a  prominent  feature  of  the  landscape 
around  the  present  town  of  Volo,  under  whose  rocky 
heights  the  many  copious  Springs  of  Jason's  time  con- 
tinue their  steady  flow. 

Strabo;  IX.  5.    §  iS- 

198 

Inachus 

The  Arethusa-like  sea  voyage  of  the  Inachus  river, 
which  traveled  through  the  ocean  and  under  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus and  climbed  a  mountain,  is  referred  to  in  con- 
nection with  the  stream  of  that  name  in  Argolis. 

Pausanias;  II.  25. 


THESSALY  279 

199 

EURYMEN^ 

There  was  a  certain  fountain  at  Eurymenae  which 
converted  chaplets  into  stone;  a  conversion  which, 
though  perfectly  useless  at  the  time,  was  probably  the 
means  of  preserving  the  name  of  the  town.  It  was  on 
the  coast  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Ossa  upon  which  the  giants 
piled  the  adjoining  mountain,  Pelion,  in  an  attempt  to 
reach  the  gods;  the  mountain  is  still  similarly  used  to 
reach  rhetorical  heights  by  such  as  are  unaware  that  its 
name  has  been  changed  to  Kissavo. 

Some  ancient  remains  found  between  Thanatu  and 
Karitza  are  assumed  to  be  what  is  left  of  the  town  of  the 
stone-making  Spring. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  20. 


MACEDONIA 

200 
PiMPLEA 

The  Spring  of  Pimplea  was  sacred  to  the  Muses. 

There  was  a  village  in  Macedonia  called  Pimplea 
where  Orpheus  lived;  it  was  beneath  Mt.  Olympus  and 
near  Diirni  on  the  bank  of  the  Helicon  River,  where 
Orpheus  was  torn  to  pieces  by  the  women. 

As,  like  Helicon,  several  other  names  of  places  and 
features  in  Macedonia  appear  also  in  Thrace,  in  Thessaly 
and  in  Boeotia,  it  was  conjectured  that  they  were  applied 
by  Thracians  who  having  migrated  before  the  Trojan  war 
and  ousted,  for  a  time,  the  previous  inhabitants  of  Boeotia, 
continued  the  Thracian  worship  of  the  Muses  with  the 
least  possible  change  as  regards  names  of  surrounding 
natural  features — a  duplication  of  names  that  no  doubt 
often  caused  later  writers,  ancient  as  well  as  modern, 
to  locate  at  a  place  in  one  territory  incidents  that  really 
occurred  elsewhere. 

Thus  Pimplea,  now  at  Litokhoro  in  Macedonia,  is  said 
in  one  modern  mythology  to  have  been  a  fountain  of  Mt. 
Helicon,  when  it  would  seem  more  probable  that  it  was 
near  the  banks  of  the  Helicon  River  in  Macedonia,  which 
district  is  not  said,  by  ancient  writers,  to  have  had  a 
mountain  called  Helicon. 

Strabo,  writing  of  the  transference  of  names,  observed 
that  the  Thracian  religious  ceremonies  were  like  those 
of  the  Phrygians,  and  he  supposed  from  the  song,  the 

280 


MACEDONIA  281 

rhythm  and  the  instruments  and  their  barbarous  names, 
that  all  Thracian  music  was  Asiatic;  and  thence  he  de- 
duced that  the  Phrygians  themselves  were  a  colony  of 
theThracians. 

But  perhaps  it  is  not  illogical  to  imagine  that  the 
current  flowed  the  other  way,  and  that  the  Mysian  Mt. 
Olympus  was  really  the  original  home  of  the  Grecian 
gods — that  the  unknown  genius,  priest  or  poet,  who 
created  the  first  of  them,  lived  at  its  base  and  there 
propagated  from  the  flowers  of  Eastern  thought  his  new 
varieties,  which  have  no  essential  similarity  with  the 
myth  cultures  of  any  peoples  east,  west,  north  or  south 
of  the  Grecian  garden  of  the  gods. 

There  is  more  than  one  Mt.  Olympus  westward  to  the 
shores  of  the  Adriatic,  but  not  one  to  the  east  of  Asia  Minor 
which,  therefore,  might  seem  to  be  the  neighborhood 
where  the  first  seed  of  Hellenic  classic  culture  sprouted. 

Pausanias;  IX.  30. 

Strabo;X.  3-    §17.     IX.  2.    §23. 


201 

Baphyra 

The   Spring  of   the  River  Baphyra  rose  twenty-two 
stadia  from  Dium. 

.  Its  water  was  the  reemergence  of  the  River  Helicon 
which  after  flowing  seventy-five  stadia  from  its  source, 
sank  into  the  ground  near  Dium  and  ran  below  the  sur- 
face for  twenty-two  stadia  beyond  that  place.  At  its 
reappearance  it  was  given  the  name  Baphyra  and  became 
a  navigable  stream  that  finally  discharged  itself  into  the 
sea,  without  further  attempt  at  concealment. 

The  Helicon  had  originally  been  a  surface  stream 
throughout  all  of  its  course ;  but  when  the  women  of  Dium 


285  NORTHERN  GREECE 

taught  men  for  the  first  time  the  value  of  liquor  for  giving 
soldiers  what  should  properly  be  called  Dium  Courage, 
and,  priming  themselves  with  wine,  killed  Orpheus,  then 
the  horrified  Helicon  hid  itself  in  the  earth,  and  the  gore- 
stained  women  found  its  bed  empty  when  they  rushed 
to  the  banks  to  wash  and  cleanse  themselves  from  blood- 
guiltiness.  The  Helicon,  rather  than  be  a  party  to  cleans- 
ing them,  having  plunged  into  the  earth  continued  out  of 
their  reach  for  the  distance  stated  before  it  rose  again  in  a 
more  quiet  neighborhood. 

Orpheus  is  said  to  have  been  killed  because  he  taught 
men  things  they  had  not  before  heard  of,  things  that,  as 
described  by  Hyginus,  were  no  doubt  considered  by  the 
women  ample  warrant  for  their  deed. 

Some  of  the  remains  of  Orpheus  were  preserved  in  a  stone 
urn  that  was  set  on  a  pillar  near  the  scene  of  the  murder. 

It  might  have  been  thought  that  no  other  place  would 
dispute  the  claim  of  being  the  site  of  such  an  atrocity; 
but  the  Thracians  did  so,  and  they  had  what  they  said 
was  the  tomb  of  the  murdered  musician.  There  were 
nightingales'  nests  in  the  tomb,  and  the  voices  of  those 
that  were  bred  there  were  more  powerful  and  their  songs 
more  enjoyable  than  those  of  other  birds  of  the  same  sort. 

The  Springs  of  the  Baphyra,  now  the  Potoki,  have  been 
located ;  and  between  them  and  the  village  of  Malathria 
many  foundations  of  the  larger  buildings  of  Dium  have 
been  uncovered. 

Pausanias;  IX.  30. 


202 

The  Fountain  of  Inna 

The  fountain  of  Inna  was  in  the  Gardens  of  Midas 
whose  roses  were  as  remarkable  as  those  of  Paestum. 


MACEDONIA  283 

This  was  the  fountain  into  which  Midas  poured  wine 
in  order  to  make  Silenus  drunk  so  that  he  could  capture 
him.  His  reason  for  wishing  to  capture  that  drunken, 
fat,  pot-belHed  old  man  with  a  puck  nose  and  a  bald  head, 
may  be  gleaned  from  the  old  man's  history,  for  Silenus, 
too,  might  have  said,  "  I  was  not  always  thus. "  He  was 
of  godly  descent,  his  father  being  either  Hermes  or  Pan, 
for  in  the  early  times  when  he  was  born  pedigrees  were 
not  kept  with  scrupulous  particularity.  He  not  only 
possessed  the  power  of  prophecy  regarding  even  the  most 
distant  future,  but,  to  mortals  who  could  intoxicate  and 
bind  him,  he  was  obliged  to  reveal  whatever  they  desired 
to  know  about.  Midas  was  no  doubt  aware  of  this  and 
designed  to  secure  some  eleemosynary  information  by 
drugging  the  fountain  of  Inna,  rather  than  incur  the 
sacrificial  expense  for  consulting  a  public  oracle. 

The  tale  of  the  fountain  holds  another  history  the  very 
reverse  of  that  of  Silenus,  a  history  commencing  with  a 
servant  and  leading  up  to  the  conqueror  of  the  earth, 
for  the  royal  genealogical  tree  of  Alexander  the  Great 
sprouted  in  the  garden  of  the  fountain  of  Inna  where 
Perdiccas  laid  the  foundation  of  the  Macedonian  mon- 
archy. 

This  Perdiccas,  fleeing  for  some  reason  from  Greece, 
came  to  Lebaea  and  secured  employment  as  an  under 
herdsman  with  the  King  of  Macedonia  when  it  was  called 
Paeonia,  perhaps  about  700  B.C. 

The  king's  wife,  who  cooked  for  the  household,  happen- 
ing to  mention  to  the  King  the  curious  fact  that  the  loaves 
she  baked  for  Perdiccas  always  doubled  in  size,  the  king 
became  terrified  and  went  crazy,  and,  discharging  the 
under  herdsman,  pointed  to  the  rays  of  the  sun  that 
shone  down  the  chimney  on  to  the  palace  floor,  and  said, 
"I  give  you  this  as  your  wages  equal  to  your  services." 


284  NORTHERN  GREECE 

Perdiccas,  in  a  matter-of-fact  way,  as  if  to  secure  his  emolu- 
ment, immediately  drew  a  line  about  the  sunshine  on  the 
palace  floor,  made  three  copies  of  the  figure  on  his  chest 
as  a  record  of  the  transaction,  and  quietly  departed. 

To  relish  the  volume  of  wit  that  the  king's  madness 
condensed  into  less  than  a  dozen  words  to  say  what  he 
thought  of  the  herder's  efficiency,  one  must  hark  back 
to  the  days  when  the  chimney  was  a  circular  hole  in  the 
center  of  the  ceiling  and  showed  the  sunshine  as  a  golden 
coin-shaped  figure  on  the  palace  floor. 

Perdiccas  went  to  the  gardens  that  had  belonged  to 
Midas,  and  took  possession  of  them. 

They  were  noted  for  the  wonderful  wild  roses  that 
bloomed  in  them  and  surpassed  in  fragrance  all  other 
roses,  although  they  were  overshadowed  by  Mt.  Ber- 
mion  that  was  inaccessible  from  its  cold.  Each  rose  had 
invariably  exactly  sixty  leaves. 

Perdiccas  prospered  and  annexed  properties  after  prop- 
erties until  he  commanded  all  of  the  country  and  was 
acknowledged  king.  From  him  to  Alexander  the  line  ran 
through  Argaeus,  Philip,  .^ropus,  Alcetes,  Amyntas  I  of 
Macedon,  Alexander  I  of  Macedon,  Amyntas  II,  Alex- 
ander II,  Philip  II,  Alexander  III,  the  Great. 

About  130  miles  from  Ancyra,  near  Thymbrium, 
another  fountain  was  pointed  out  to  Cyrus  as  the  foun- 
tain of  Midas;  that  one  may  have  been  the  Spring  at 
which  the  king  himself  was  made  drunk,  or,  at  which  the 
king  drugged  the  Satyr  who  made  fun  of  his  asslike 
ears. 

Where  Paeonia  was  is  now  Salonica,  and  in  its  center 
is  lenidja  which  seems  even  in  its  Turkish  disguise  to 
sound  the  ancient  fountain's  name  of  Inna. 

Atbenseus;  II.  23. 
Herodotus;  VIII.  137. 


MACEDONIA  285 

203 

A  single  mention  of  the  name  of  the  Spring  of  JEa.  in 
one  Hne  of  Homer  is  perhaps  all  that  the  modern  world 
would  have  heard  of  that  Macedonian  fountain  but  for 
a  sleepy  nod  of  the  poet,  or  one  of  his  scribes,  and  a  re- 
sulting transposition  of  two  names. 

The  Spring  rose  near  the  town  of  Amydon,  and  dis- 
charged so  big  a  body  of  clearest  water  into  the  River 
Axius  as  to  cover  and  conceal  the  muddy  surface  of  that 
stream  which  was  two  miles  wide  near  its  mouth. 

Therefore  when  Homer  with  two  words  pictured  a  map 
of  the  place  from  which  Pyraschmes  led  his  Paeonian 
troops  to  aid  in  the  defense  of  Troy,  and  the  line ; — 

"Axius  whose  fairest  water  o'erspreads  'JEa'" 

appeared  in  the  Iliad,  the  critics  who  knew  of  the  fairness 
of  the  fountain's  waters  and  the  riliness  of  the  river's,  lost 
little  time  in  attacking  the  line  and  putting  forward  alter- 
native readings  that  aired  their  knowledge  and  made  the 
fountain's  name  a  household  word  in  reading  coteries. 

And  then  the  line  was  blotted  out  as  effectually  as, 
not  only  the  mud  of  the  river,  and  the  town,  which  was 
afterwards  razed,  but  as  Pyraschmes  himself;  for  that  un- 
fortunate warrior  was  pierced  by  the  spear  of  Achilles 
and  probably  expired  under  the  impression  that  he  fell 
while  fighting  the  great  Grecian  hero,  although  he  was 
really  the  victim  of  Patroclus,  and  the  first  Trojan  ally 
the  latter  killed  after  putting  on  the  borrowed  armor  of 
Achilles  to  frighten  the  city's  defenders  and  drive  them, 
away  from  the  Grecian  ships  that  they  were  trying  to 
burn. 

The  neighborhood  of  Ma.  was  little  less  unlucky  for 


286  NORTHERN  GREECE 

another  warrior,  as  it  was  on  its  nearby  plain  of  Methone 
that  Philip  Amyntus  had  his  right  eye  put  out  by  an 
arrow  shot  from  a  long  range  catapult. 

The  name  of  the  Axius  has  been  changed  to  Vardhari, 
and  Amydon  is  supposed  to  have  been  somewhere  near 
its  mouth  on  the  Gulf  of  Salonica. 

Strabo;  Fragment  20,  23- 
Iliad;  II.    line  1070. 


204 

Pella 

The  Spring  of  Pella  rose  in  an  elevation  that  was  sur- 
rounded by  marshes  made  by  its  overflow. 

On  the  elevation  a  city  was  founded  which  received  its 
name  from  the  fountain  and  became  the  capital  of  Mace- 
donia, the  royal  residence  of  Philip,  and  the  birthplace  of 
Alexander. 

The  fish  of  a  lake  that  formed  in  the  marshes  of  the 
Spring  grew  to  a  great  size,  and  their  fatness  in  summer 
was  a  theme  of  the  epicures. 

Among  the  few  clever  sayings  of  the  Athenian  wit 
Stratonicus  that  have  been  preserved,  two  refer  to  the 
water  of  Pella  which  was  said  to  produce  enlargement  of 
the  spleen. 

When  he  saw  some  sallow-looking  men  drawing  water 
at  the  fountain,  he  asked  them  if  the  water  was  fit  to 
drink;  and  to  their  somewhat  contemptuous  reply,  "We 
drink  it,"  he  immediately  rejoined,  "Then  I  am  sure  it 
is  not  fit  to  drink." 

While  depositing  his  clothing  with  the  keeper  at  the 
Baths,  a  man  who  had  an  extremely  prominent  belly,  he 
observed,  "I  see  that  you  receive  the  bathers'  spleens  as 
well  as  their  clothes." 


MACEDONIA  287 

The  Spring  is  supposed  to  have  been  in  the  center  of 
the  city,  at  a  spot  among  the  ruins  where  there  is  now  a 
fountain  whose  name  the  Bulgarians  of  the  neighboring 
village  of  Neokhori  have  shortened  to  Pel. 

Athenaeus;  VIII.  45.  and  41. 


205 

LlTiE 

At  Litse  a  Spring  of  fresh  water  issued  forth  in  the 
middle  of  the  lake  that  produced  chalastricum,  a  pure 
white  substance  closely  resembling  salt,  and  supposed 
to  have  been  carbonate  of  soda. 

It  was  considered  a  "truly  marvelous  fact"  that, 
although  this  Spring  in  the  salty  lake  flowed  continuously 
the  volume  of  water  in  the  lake  never  increased,  and  that 
there  was  no  overflow  nor  any  apparent  outlet. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  46. 


206 

NONACRIS 

Seneca  quotes  Q.  Curtius  as  stating  that  there  was  a 
Spring  called  Nonacris,  in  Macedonia,  whose  waters 
were  malignant,  but  its  precise  location  is  not  mentioned. 

Possibly  it  was  the  source  of  one  of  the  two  streams 
that  flowed  at  the  sides  of  Euripides'  tomb  at  Arethusa, 
the  water  of  one  of  which  was  said  to  be  excellent,  while 
that  of  the  other  was  deadly, 

Pliny;  II.  106. 
Vitruvius;  VIII.  3. 


',■''-£. 


THRACE 

207 
The  Well  Libethra 

From  the  Well  Libethra  in  Thrace  the  Muses  were 
said  to  have  derived  one  of  their  many  appellations,  that 
of  Libethrides;  as  another,  Aganippides,  was  due  to  their 
Spring  on  Mt.  Helicon. 

The  ancients  at  one  period  considered  Thrace  a  very 
large  tract  that  formed  the  Fourth  of  the  principal  divi- 
sions of  the  earth ;  and  that  included,  with  a  part  of  Mace- 
donia, all  of  Europe  to  the  north  of  Greece;  a  part  of  the 
world  of  which  the  musician  and  wit  Stratonicus  said 
that  its  year  consisted  of  eight  months  of  cold  and  four 
months  of  winter. 

But  by  about  two  hundred  years  before  the  Christian 
Era  the  name  Thrace  had  been  confined  to  a  small  section 
at  the  southeastern  end  of  Europe. 

After  its  early  names  Perke  and  Aria,  a  change  of 
name  occurred  with  nearly  every  shifting  of  its  boun- 
daries, which  have  included  parts  of  what  have  been 
called  Thrace,  Eumatia,  Macedonia,  Moesia,  Bulgaria, 
Servia,  and,  in  the  present  time,  Roumelia  with  its  divi- 
sion of  Gallipoli.  Thrace  came  under  the  dominion  of 
the  Turks  one  hundred  and  twelve  years  after  their  ad- 
vent in  Europe  in  1341  a.d.,  but,  as  Servia,  won  its  in- 
dependence in  1878. 

To  add  to  the  confusion,  Bithynia  was  at  one  time 
called  Thrace;  and  the  people  in  Phocis  and  in  the  tract 

288 


THRACE  289 

about  Mt.  Parnassus  and  Mt.  Helicon  were  once  called 
Thracians. 

Owing  to  these  changes,  places  may  be  spoken  of  as 
in  Thessaly,  or  Macedonia,  or  Thrace  according  to  the 
boundary  the  writer  had  in  mind;  and  people  of  other 
places  may  be  called  Thracians  merely  because  their 
ancestors  came  from  Thrace. 

Nothing  is  left  of  the  Thracian  language,  or  of  those 
parts  of  the  writings  of  Strabo  that  probably  shed  some 
light  upon  its  speakers,  so  that  there  are  only  theories 
to  reconcile  statements  that  the  Thracians  were  wild 
people  who  tattooed  themselves  and  who  lived  by 
war  and  plunder,  with  other  assertions  that  the  civili- 
zation of  the  Grecians  was  the  outgrowth  of  that  of  the 
Thracians,  who  invented  and  cultivated  the  Muses  with 
all  their  softening  influences  in  every  branch  of  refining 
thought. 

One  method  of  reconciliation  is  to  suppose  that  the 
refined  people  of  Thrace  were  driven  out  by  uncouth 
people  from  the  north  who  then  became  known  as  Thra- 
cians. 

The  Muses  who,  according  to  late  accounts,  were 
brought  up  on  Mt.  Helicon  were,  by  earlier  genealogies, 
born  in  Thrace,  when  Macedonia  was  a  part  of  it,  on  Mt. 
Olympus  which  was  also  the  home  of  the  gods;  and  per- 
haps it  might  even  be  surmised  that  the  original  legend 
was  attached  to  one  of  the  several  Mts.  Olympus  to  the 
east  among  Asiatic  peoples  from  whom  came  florid  tales 
of  such  tissue  as  the  Arabian  Nights,  and  the  more  pre- 
tentious poetry  of  the  epics  of  India. 

Helicon,  Pieria,  Thebes,  and  manj^  other  names  of  the 

Thracians,  transplanted  to  Boeotia  thrived  there  until 

replaced  with  Turkish   designations.     Where  Boeotian 

natural  features  were  lacking  for  the  Thracian  names, 

19 


290  NORTHERN  GREECE 

some  of  the  latter  continued  to  be  used  with  seeming 
irrelevancy,  as  when  the  Muses  were  styled  the  Libeth- 
rides  although  the  Spring  that  gave  them  that  name  was 
a  Thracian  fount  and  not  a  fountain  of  Boeotia. 

The  modern  Servians  have  all  the  conflicting  charac- 
teristics of  the  ancient  Muse-creating  Thracians;  they 
have  a  love  for  literature,  and  a  rich  poetic  spirit  ex- 
pressed in  a  soft,  melodious  language.  And  they  have 
a  bent  for  war  that  has  allowed  them  few  periods  of 
peace  during  many  centuries. 

They  are  not  only  warful  themselves  but  the  innocent 
cause  of  war  among  others,  as  the  shot  of  one  of  them  in 
1914  was  made  the  pretext  for  the  most  widespread  con- 
flict of  which  the  human  race  has  any  record. 

The  Well  Libethra  was  near  Dium,  the  modern  counter- 
part of  which,  Malathria,  is  taken  to  be  a  corruption  of 
Libethra. 

Orpheus  was  buried  at  Libethra  by  the  Muses,  and  at 
their  request  Zeus  placed  the  musician's  lyre  among  the 
stars  where  it  may  still  be  seen  as  one  of  the  many  bright 
instruments  in  the  celestial  orchestra  that  produces  the 
music  of  the  spheres. 

Before  this  apotheosis,  however,  the  rescued  lyre  was 
exhibited  at  Lesbos  in  the  temple  of  Apollo  whose  priests 
sold  it  to  Neanthus.  If  Neanthus  dreamed  of  succeeding 
to  the  fame  of  the  original  owner  he  was  rudely  awakened 
by  the  dogs  of  his  city  who  ran  to  him  from  all  quarters 
at  the  sound  of  his  opening  chords  and  incontinently 
tore  him  to  pieces. 

While  the  remains  of  Orpheus  were  being  searched  for 
to  inter  them,  the  dismembered  head  made  its  where- 
abouts known  by  the  sweet  sounds  that  continued  to  issue 
from  its  lips. 

The  head  also  was  preserved  at  Lesbos  and  is  said  to 


THRACE  2^1; 

have  uttered  oracles  from  the  bottom  of  a  cave,  in 
that  island. 

Strabo;  IX.  a.    {  25.    X.  3.    i  17. 
Ovid;  Mete.  XI.    Fable  1. 


208 

Tearus 

The  very  remarkable  Springs  of  this  river  came  out  of 
a  single  rock  in  the  southeastern  part  of  Thrace. 

It  is  not  only  surprising  that  there  were  thirty-eight  of 
these  fountains  issuing  from  one  rock,  but  more  astonish- 
ing still  that  they  came  out  of  the  rock  at  temperatures 
varying  from  cold  to  warm. 

Their  waters  passing  from  the  Tearus  into  first  one 
river,  and  then  another,  finally  reached  the  ^Egean  Sea 
through  a  third,  the  Hebrus  River. 

When  Darius  came  to  the  sources  of  the  Tearus,  on  his 
Scythian  expedition,  he  halted  his  army  about  the  Springs 
for  three  days ;  and  he  was  so  much  impressed  with  them 
that  he  put  up  a  pillar  bearing  an  inscriptive  testimonial 
to  the  virtues  of  the  waters — and  to  his  own,  as  one 
authority  dryly  expresses  the  matter. 

The  wording  of  the  laudatory  tablet  gives  no  clue  to 
the  particular  virtue  of  the  Springs,  but  as  even  in  a 
modern  army,  surrounded  with  every  hygienic  safeguard, 
a  little  stick  eighteen  inches  long  is  among  the  most 
prized  possessions  of  the  privates,  one  can  easily  fancy 
how  much  Darius'  half  savage,  unsanitary  and  scratch- 
ing soldiers  appreciated  these  Springs  when  they  learned 
that  the  waters  had  curative  properties  and  were  a  specific 
in  cases  of  mange,  itch  and  other  irritations  of  the  skin. 

The  tablet  was  inscribed ; — "The  Springs  of  the  Tearus 
yield  the  best  and  finest  waters  of  all  rivers ;  and  a  man. 


^9^  NORTHERN  GREECE 

the  best  and  finest  of  all  men,  came  to  them,  leading  an 
army  against  the  Scythians,  Darius,  son  of  Hystaspes, 
king  of  the  Persians,  and  of  the  whole  continent." 
The  river  is  now  called  the  Teare. 

Herodotus;  IV.  89. 


209 

The  Tritonian  Lake 

Tritonis  was  a  lake  in  the  vicinity  of  Pallene,  a  city  of 
Thrace,  of  which  Vibius  Sequester  says,  when  a  person 
has  nine  times  bathed  himself  in  it  he  is  changed  into  a 
bird.  The  water  may,  after  long  use,  have  caused  an 
efflorescence  that  suggested  the  down  of  young  birds,  or, 
it  may  have  had  such  an  exhilarating  effect  as  to  give  its 
users  that  buoyant  sensation  sometimes  described  as 
"feeling  as  light  as  a  bird." 

The  waters  of  the  Clitumnus,  a  small  river  in  Umbria, 
were  believed  to  give  white  calves,  so  much  required  for 
sacrifices,  to  cows  who  drank  of  them;  a  belief  that  was 
still  current  in  the  time  of  Boccaccio. 

Pallene  was  on  the  western  of  the  three  Salonica  pen- 
insulas, that  one  now  called  Kassandhra,  and  was  one 
pf  the  places  designated  as  the  battleground  of  the  gods 
and  the  giants. 

Ovid;  Meta.  XV.    line  355. 


MAGNA  GR^CIA 

210 

Magna  Gr^cia 

Long  before  Evander's  herds  were  straying  through 
the  bogs  and  wastes  about  the  hills  over  which  Rome  was 
afterwards  built,  there  was  opulence  and  art  and  litera- 
ture among  the  Grecians.  This  was  shown  in  the  shields 
of  the  soldiers  at  the  siege  of  Troy,  by  the  materials  they 
were  made  of,  by  their  decorations  and  by  the  subjects 
portrayed  in  the  designs  they  bore. 

Although  the  mooted  question  whether  Homer's  works 
were  originally  in  writing  may  never  be  settled,  there  is 
much  evidence  that  they  might  have  been  written,  even 
had  they  been  composed  a  thousand  ^'■ears  earlier.  The 
Letters  of  Bellerophon  are  as  well  known  as  those  of 
Junius;  Homer  himself  describes  them  as  sealed,  and, 
"With  things  of  deadly  import  writ  therein"  (Iliad; 
VL  line  215),  a  description  indicating,  not  only  Homer's 
familiarity  with  writing  but,  that  the  art  was  practised 
before  his  period;  indeed,  two  hundred  years  before  the 
time  of  Homer,  his  hero  Ulysses  wrote  instructions  to 
his  business  managers,  in  letters  that  were  preserved  for 
generations  thereafter  (Pausanias;  VHL  14).  Five 
hundred  years  before  those  instructions  were  written, 
Moses  received  the  Ten  Commandments  in  writing ;  five 
centuries  before  the  time  of  Moses,  Cadmus  introduced 
writing  into  Greece — and  no  one  knows  for  how  many 
centuries    before    Cadmus'    day    his    countrymen,    the 

293 


294  MAGNA  GR.ECIA 

Phoenicians,  made  use  of  the  alphabet,  nor,  how  many 
ages  still  earlier  the  Egyptians  began  to  write  their 
records  in  the  characters  that  anyone  may  still,  not  only 
see  but,  readily  learn  to  read  on  the  obelisks  that  today 
adorn  thoroughfares  in  European  capitals  and  in  New 
York. 

It  may,  therefore,  be  justifiably  supposed  that  in 
Homer's  time  there  were  other  authors,  and  that  in  earlier 
ages  among  the  Greeks  there  were  writers  whose  works, 
like  numbers  of  those  that  are  known  to  have  been  pro- 
duced centuries  later,  were  destroyed  by  fire  and  decay, 
or  dropped  out  of  sight  in  places  where  it  is  to  be  hoped 
they  may  still  some  day  be  found. 

With  the  advantage  of  the  long  time  allowance  their 
earlier  beginnings  gave  them,  ihe  continental  Greeks  had 
located  in  their  own  territories  nearly  all  the  events  of 
mythology  evolved  by  them,  or  in  Egypt,  Assyria,  or 
elsewhere,  before  the  dawn  of  refined  writing  in  Italy 
had  begun  to  illimiinate  its  literature;  so  that,  when  the 
Romans  entered  the  race  of  writers,  there  were  few  re- 
markable incidents  left  to  attach  to  Italian  vSprings,  save 
such  as  were  connected  with  local  affairs.  Therefore, 
while  something  of  religious  and  world-wide  interest 
occurred  at  many  of  the  Grecian  Springs,  the  history  of 
most  of  the  Italian  Springs  beyond  the  boundaries  of 
Rome,  might  be  condensed  in  the  general  statement  that 
they  also  bubbled  and  ran — though,  but  for  Roman  and 
other  armies,  the  Greek  writers  would  no  doubt  in  a  few 
ages  have  filled  every  Italian  fountain  as  full  of  legends 
and  interest  as  were  those  of  Greece  across  the  Adriatic 
Sea;  for  Italy  itself  was  Greek  in  name  and  ownership 
before  it  was  Italian. 

Owing  to  the  catchword  "  The  Boot, "  the  outHne  of  the 
map  of  Italy  is  probably  visuaHzed  more  readily  than 


MAGNA  GR^CIA  295 

that  of  any  other  country  in  the  atlas.  The  toe  of  the 
boot,  by  which  so  many  barbarous  tribes  were  kicked 
into  civiHzed  shape,  forms  a  rough  outHne  of  a  shoe,  and 
the  shoe  part  was  called  Italy  when  still  Grecian  and" 
before  any  other  portion  of  the  peninsula  received  the 
name,  which  was  derived,  according  to  one  deduction, 
from  Italus  who  went  there  about  1710  B.C.  with  his 
brothers  CEnotrus  and  lapyx,  three  sons  of  the  Arcadian 
Greek  Lycaon  whose  descendants  gave  names  to  so  many 
places  in  Greece  itself,  the  three  sons  being  the  first  of  all 
colonizers  to  leave  the  motherland. 

The  toe  of  the  boot  was  at  first  called  CEnotria,  then 
Italia,  then  Bruttii,  and  finally,  Calabria.  The  heel  was 
at  first  called  lapygia,  after  lapyx,  then  Massapia,  then 
Calabria,  and,  finally.  Terra  D'Otranto. 

Others  from  Greece,  swarming  over  the  Brobdingnagian 
boot,  covered  it  with  settlements,  so  that  in  time  the 
lower  part  of  the  peninsula,  for  a  third  of  its  length,  came 
to  be  called  Magna  Grascia. 

Several  of  the  cities  of  Magna  Grascia  are  said  to  have 
been  founded  at  the  close  of  the  Trojan  war,  and  in  proof 
that  Epeius  founded  Metapontum  the  people  of  that  city 
exhibited  in  the  temple  of  Minerva  the  tools  with  which 
he  made  the  wooden  horse. 

Nothing,  however,  is  known  of  the  careers  of  these 
cities  before  720  B.C.  when  the  history  of  Sybaris  begins; 
still,  it  is  quite  possible  that  people  from  Troy,  and  else- 
where, were  stranded  on  the  peninsula  and  appropriated 
settlements  of  the  dwellers  they  found  there,  just  as  the 
CEnotrians  did  in  17 10,  for  there  is  no  account  of  any 
discoverer  of  anything  but  desert  islands  who  ever  landed 
where  someone  else  had  not  preceded  him. 

The  CEnotrians  found  the  Siculi  in  possession,  and 
allowed  them  to  cross  over  to  the  neighboring  island  and 


296  MAGNA  GR.ECIA 

substitute  Sicily  for  Thrinakia,  or  whatever  the  Sicani, 
their  predecessors,  had  called  it  when  the  still  earlier 
Eljrmi  or  Lcestrygones  bestowed  it  on  them,  no  doubt 
with  all  that  innate  and  charming  courtesy  that  has  in- 
variably prompted  primitive  tribes  to  relinquish  their 
estates  to  the  last  arrivals  and  seek  accommodations  at  a 
distance  if  the  new  discoverers  were  unwilling  to  accept 
their  offers  of  servitude. 

Charming  concession  has,  however,  not  always  been 
one-sided  in  these  early  meetings,  for  there  are  many 
instances  of  the  courtesy  of  the  discoverers  themselves; 
the  Greek  arrivals  of  the  Vlllth  century  cheerfully 
accepted  the  servitude  of  the  CEnotrians;  and,  though 
there  are  no  evidences  of  the  extravagances  of  Columbus, 
or  of  what  vast  sum,  in  the  aggregate,  was  paid  to  the 
Indians  of  North  and  South  America,  the  iavishness  of 
the  Quakers  in  Pennsylvania,  and  of  the  Dutch  in  New 
York,  is  an  open  secret,  the  latter  having  without  a 
quibble  accepted  Manhattan  real  estate  at  a  figure  that 
no  one  would  think  of  asking  for  it  today. 

That  Magna  Grfficia,  from  720  down,  cultivated  the 
arts,  no  less  intensively  than  the  mother  country,  may  be 
judged  from  the  remarkable  beauty  of  the  designs  on 
their  coinage ;  and  their  literary  productions  were  doubt- 
less of  an  equally  high  order,  though  they  did  not  survive 
the  maelstroms  of  misfortune  that  the  coins  passed 
through  unscathed. 

The  material  prosperity  of  the  country  was  prodigious, 
and  led  to  a  luxury  of  living  that  is  still  the  standard  for 
valuing  a  voluptuary — a  standard  set  by  one  of  its  cities, 
Sybaris. 

The  wealth  of  Magna  Grascia  became  coveted  by  many 
outsiders  for  whom  its  most  effeminate  cities  were  an 
alluring  and  easy  prey,  as  they  were,  too,  even  for  the 


MAGNA  GR^CIA  ^97 

hardier  of  their  own  neighbors.  Foreign  leaders,  from 
King  Alexander  of  Epirus  in  332,  to  Hannibal  in  207,  who 
came  to  the  country  ostensibly  as  friends  and  to  aid  it 
against  enemies,  quickly  found  pretexts  for  pillage  and 
destruction,  from  which  the  impoverished  victims  never 
recovered. 

With  the  defeat  of  Pyrrhus  in  275  B.C.,  the  southern 
end  of  the  peninsula  came  under  Roman  dominion,  and 
shortly  before  the  Christian  Era  the  cities  of  Magna  Grae- 
cia  were  Greek  only  in  name — and,  generally,  the  name 
was  all  that  was  left  of  them ;  such  as  had  not  criunbled  to 
broken  bricks  and  stones,  or  dust,  in  the  weakness  of  age, 
had  shriveled  to  villages,  or  even  to  a  single  building;  and 
under  successive  plagues  of  Norman,  Saracen,  and 
malaria,  these  had  disappeared  so  thoroughly  1300  years 
ago  that  the  locations  now  assigned  to  them  are  in  many 
cases  admittedly  merely  conjectures  that  such  and  such 
waste  tracts  were  once  covered  with  the  grandeurs  that 
were  Magna  Graecia. 

Strabo;VI.  I.     §4. 
Pausanias;  VIII.  3. 


211 

The  Fountain  of  Blood 

(In  Sybaris) 

The  three  sons  of  Lycaon  who  migrated  in  1710  B.C. 
and  settled  in  what  is  now  the  lowest  part  of  the  Italian 
peninsula,  apparently  incorporated  with  the  people  they 
found  there,  and  forgot  Greece  and  even  its  language. 
And  these,  in  turn,  some  500  years  later  probably  ab- 
sorbed a  number  of  stranded  soldiers  and  refugees  from 
Troy;  so  that  500  years  still  later,  in  B.C.  720,  when  the 
colonists  of  less  primeval  Greece  reached  the  district. 


298  MAGNA  GR^CIA 

they  regarded  the  older  population  as  Barbarians,  and 
in  the  course  of  time  enslaved  them. 

The  first  of  these  later  day  Grecians,  to  whose  presence 
the  name  of  Magna  Grsecia  is  due,  were  from  Achaia;  and 
the  first  city  they  founded,  or  occupied,  was  Sybaris. 

Probably  they  came  from  the  Achaian  town  of  Bura, 
the  home  of  the  unfortunate  fountain  of  Sybaris,  as  that 
name  was  given  both  to  the  new  town  and  to  one  of  the 
two  rivers  between  which  it  was  located,  at  a  distance  of 
some  three  miles  from  the  Tarentine  Gulf. 

The  city  was  no  less  unfortunate  than  the  fountain — 
their  ends,  like  their  names,  were  exactly  the  same ;  they 
were  both  drowned;  the  city,  by  a  river;  and  the  fountain, 
by  the  sea.  The  water  of  the  Sybaris  river  turned  sheep 
and  cattle  black;  caused  horses  to  shy;  and  made  men 
swarthy,  hardy,  and  curly  haired.  The  other  river,  the 
Crathis,  caused  whiteness  in  the  animals,  and  made  men 
fair  and  effeminate,  with  straight  hair  of  a  peculiar  gold- 
red  tinge;  it  had,  however,  the  property  of  curing  some 
kinds  of  disorders,  and  the  Croton  people  may  have  shown 
a  grim  conception  of  fitness  in  selecting  it  as  the  instru- 
ment in  their  treatment  of  Sybaris. 

Anciently  these  rivers  followed  separate  routes  to  the 
sea,  but  now  they  join  three  miles  before  they  reach  the 
Gulf,  a  union  that  seems  to  confirm  the  statement  that 
the  Crotoniats  changed  the  course  of  the  Crathis  to  inun- 
date the  Sybarites. 

Nearly  a  century  later,  the  waters  of  the  Crathis  were 
again  disturbed  when  one  of  its  feeders,  now  called  Bu- 
sento,  near  the  city  of  Consentia,  had  its  course  tempo- 
rarily changed  while  the  body  of  Alaric  was  buried  in  its 
bed.  When  the  interment  was  completed,  the  waters 
were  restored  to  their  former  course,  and  all  of  the 
grave  diggers  were  killed,  as  a  double  assurance  that 


MAGNA  GR^CIA  299 

the  last  resting  place  of  the  Visigoth  would  never  be 
revealed. 

The  Sybaris,  now  called  the  Cosile,  rose  in  the  Apen- 
nine  mountains  quite  twenty  miles  away,  and  the  city 
itself  had  no  local  Spring  until  a  short  while  before  its 
complete  destruction  by  the  neighboring  town  of  Cro- 
tona,  when  a  miraculous  Fountain  of  Blood  gushed  up 
through  the  floor  of  the  temple  of  Juno. 

The  people  of  Sybaris  had  then  become  unbearably 
immoral  and  arrogant,  through  generations  of  luxury 
and  indolence  fostered  by  a  delicious  climate,  and  made 
possible  by  great  wealth  that  a  hiatus  in  history  regret- 
tably leaves  unaccounted  for. 

The  life  rule  of  typical ' '  Sybarites ' '  seems  to  have  been 
"Eat,  drink,  love  and  waste  away  with  pleasure."  They 
looked  upon  any  kind  of  work,  not  only  as  disgraceful, 
but  as  so  irksome  that  as  one  of  them  expressed  it,  even 
to  see  a  person  working  made  his  bones  sore ;  to  which  an 
auditor  languidly  rejoined  that  just  to  hear  work  spoken 
of  gave  him  a  pain  in  the  side. 

Some  of  them  may  even  have  eaten  from  an  atten- 
dant's mouth,  to  avoid  the  labor  of  chewing,  as  did  Sagus 
the  King  of  the  Mariandyni. 

Indeed,  according  to  one  of  the  local  poets  of  those 
days,  not  even  the  chewer's  labor  was  required,  for,  as 
Metagenes  wrote,  the  Crathis  and  the  Sybaris  rivers, 
acting  as  butlers,  bore  down  to  the  Sybarites  self-cooked 
foods  in  regular  courses  which  he  describes,  in  full  from 
hors  d'oeuvres  to  pastry,  as  swimming  around  every- 
where and  rushing  into  the  mouths  of  the  languid  volup- 
tuaries. 

Prizes  were  given  for  the  invention  of  delicious  dishes, 
and  the  profits  secured  by  a  year's  patent  on  such  built 
up  a  large  body  of  Edisons  of  the  kitchen  who  amassed 


360  MAGNA  GR^CIA 

wealth  in  creating  new  delicacies,  and  flavors  so  subtile 
that  the  mouth  was  covered  and  the  hands  were  gloved 
while  the  artist  compounded  them  to  the  accompaniment 
of  inspirational  music. 

Cooks  who  served  the  most  exquisite  dainties  were 
crowned,  and  Smindyrides  gave  a  fair  field  to  rivalry  in 
his  own  household  by  employing  a  catering  and  kitchen 
staff  of  a  thousand  slaves.  That  was  in  the  heyday  of 
the  city's  prosperity,  which  perhaps  reached  its  height 
about  580  B.C. 

In  the  care  and  adornment  of  their  persons  effeminacy 
was  carried  to  extremes;  after  a  vapor  bath,  and  when 
their  faces  had  been  smoothed  with  pumice  stone  and 
made  whiter  than  milk,  they  were  washed  in  perfumes 
from  golden  ewers,  and  anointed  with  costly  and  sweet 
smelling  oils. 

They  wore  embroidered  robes  and  cloaks  of  purple  and 
scarlet  and  gold,  of  apple  green,  of  blue,  and  of  fiery  red; 
and  one  of  the  garments  of  Alcisthenes  was  sold  for  the 
equivalent  of  $120,000. 

Rewards  were  given  for  the  invention  of  new  pleasures, 
and  there  was  no  extravagance  that  they  did  not  think 
nothing  of. 

At  the  evening  meal  there  were  entertainments  by 
dwarfs  and  conjurors,  athletes  and  dancers,  tragedians, 
comic  actors  and  rhapsodists.  Music  was  a  matter  of 
routine;  the  harp,  or  the  lyre,  or  the  flute,  were  no  less 
equipment  of  the  culinary  department  than  pots  and  pans. 

The  slaves  were  flogged  to  the  melody  of  the  flute,  and 
the  horses  were  trained  to  dance  to  the  strains  of  the  same 
instrument — an  accomplishment  that  in  the  end  brought 
disaster  to  the  vSybarites'  cavalry,  whose  formation  was 
destroyed  when  the  wily  Crotoniats  fluted  familiar  airs 
that  set  it  to  prancing  on  the  battlefield. 


MAGNA  GR^CIA  301 

The  rooms  of  the  dwellings  were  scented  with  burning 
incense,  and  the  floors,  when  not  strewn  with  flowers  or 
fragrant  herbs,  were  sprinkled  with  exquisite  perfumes; 
while,  in  the  matter  of  decoration,  the  houses  excelled  in 
magnificence  the  temples  of  the  gods. 

To  make  riding  easy,  more  clothes  were  put  on  their 
horses  than  on  their  beds;  and  three  days  were  consumed 
in  going  an  ordinary  day's  journey.  Such  as  walked, 
were  followed  by  slaves  carrying  folding  chairs  for  fre- 
quent rests  in  the  awning  covered  streets. 

There  were  attendants  skilled  in  lulling  to  sleep,  not- 
withstanding the  absence  of  all  noise,  for  no  brazier, 
carpenter  or  smith,  or  anyone  employed  in  a  trade  that 
might  disturb  slumber,  was  allowed  to  live  in  Sybaris, 
from  which  even  the  rooster  was  excluded,  until  his 
crowing  had  been  stopped. 

After  generations  of  such  luxury  and  indolence,  a 
Crotonian  army  of  100,000  easily  conquered  300,000 
Sybarites,  and,  turning  the  Crathis  river  into  the  city 
drowned  it  out  of  existence;  a  catastrophe  that  might 
have  been  foreseen  in  the  Fountain  of  Blood  that  flooded 
the  temple  while  the  statue  of  Juno  turned  away  its  head 
in  token  of  anger  at  the  wickedness  of  the  inhabitants — 
indeed  one  account  even  intimates  that  the  flooding  of 
the  city  was  the  work  of  the  miraculous  fountain,  which 
the  inhabitants  strove  to  stifle  with  heavy  slabs  of  brass 
that  they  piled  upon  the  temple  floor  in  frantic  but  all 
vain  attempts  to  stop  the  resistless  flow,  whose  effects, 
whatever  the  cause,  are  still  to  be  seen  in  a  desolate 
swamp,  pestilential  to  all  but  the  vast  herds  of  buffaloes 
that  flounder  through  it  today — a  swamp  that  covers  the 
tract  on  which  the  unfortunate  city  floiirished  during 
a  short  but  merry  life  of  only  200  years,  for  nothing 
is  known  of  its  existence  between  700  and  11 84  B.C. 


302  MAGNA  GR^CIA 

when  according  to  one  account  it  was  settled  by  soldiers 
from  Troy. 

Athenaeus;  XII.  21.     XII.  14. 
Strabo;  VI.  X.     §  13  and  S  13. 


212 

Thuria 

About  443  years  before  Christ,  the  Athenians  sent  out 
a  colonizing  party  that  included  the  historian  Herodotus, 
and  these,  under  the  direction  of  an  oracle,  founded  a 
settlement  a  short  distance  from  the  ruins  of  Sybaris, 
where  there  was  a  fountain  known  as  Thuria,  from  which 
the  city  derived  its  name,  Thurii,  and  Herodotus  his,  of 
Thurius. 

The  town  was  laid  out,  by  Hippodamus  an  Athenian 
architect,  with  streets  crossing  at  right  angles,  a  new 
arrangement  devised  by  him  and  used  for  the  first  time 
but  one  in  Thurii.  An  amusing  account  of  the  estab- 
lishing of  a  new  city  is  given  in  Aristophanes'  comedy 
"The  Birds,"  wherein  the  founder's  secretary  describes 
himself  as  from  Thria,  so  evidently  Thurii  that  it  is  in- 
teresting to  think  of  this  town  as  having  probably  pro- 
duced more  shouts  of  laughter  than  any  other  city  in  the 
world,  for  even  a  place,  that  has  contributed  to  the  gaiety 
of  nations,  is  not  lightly  to  be  forgotten. 

"The  Birds"  meant  were  no  doubt  the  feathered 
descendants  of  the  transformed  companions  of  Diomed, 
they  bred  in  southern  Italy  until  the  Christian  Era,  and 
showed  their  human  origin  in  their  choice  of  food  and 
their  approachability. 

The  novelty  of  Hippodamus*  block  system  in  streets 
perhaps  had  such  a  counterpart  in  his  political  life  as 
that  which  extended  the  reputation  of  a  modern  senator, 


MAGNA  GR^CIA  303 

for  it  is  said  that  Theano,  a  lady  of  Thurii,  wrote  to  him 
at  considerable  length  on  the  subject  of  virtue. 

The  Thurians  made  a  wine  of  repute,  and  enjoyed  a 
long  period  of  prosperity,  but  the  city  became  almost 
depopulated  through  the  oppressions  of  its  neighbors; 
the  Romans  repeopled  it,  and  changed  its  name  to  Copiae, 
but  even  that  promising  appellation  failed  to  stabilize 
its  fortunes. 

Maybe  a  clue  to  its  oppressors  and  their  oppressions  is 
to  be  found  in  the  meaning  of  the  nameBruttii  (runaways) , 
that  the  district  in  which  Thurii  was  situated — the  an- 
cient land  of  Lycaon's  youngest  son  CEnotrus — received 
about  390  B.C.,  at  which  time,  the  many  slaves,  who  for 
years  had  sought  asylvun  in  the  tract,  having  become 
ntmierous  enough  to  gain  domination,  the  designation 
for  runaway  slaves  was  appropriately  applied  to  it. 

History  repeated  itself  300  years  later  when  Spartacus, 
the  oratorical  gladiator  of  the  "Readers,  "  who  was  also 
a  runaway  slave,  after  hiding  for  some  time  in  Vesuvius 
issued  from  its  crater  in  an  eruption  that  did  more  damage 
to  Italy  than  any  that  the  volcano  itself  has  ever  pro- 
duced. Proclaiming  the  freedom  of  the  slaves,  he  at- 
tracted a  following  that  at  one  time  nimibered  100,000 
and,  between  73  and  71  B.C.,  devastated  the  country 
from  the  Alps  to  the  sea  at  its  southern  extremity,  where, 
in  Thurii,  he  located  his  headquarters.  He  was  conquered 
and  killed  at  the  river  Silaurus,  and,  as  a  warning  to  any 
bandits  still  left,  the  Appian  Way  from  Rome  to  Capua 
was  columned  with  the  corpses  of  6000  of  his  followers. 

While  at  Thurii,  Spartacus  held  great  fairs  to  which 
the  countryside  flocked  to  buy  the  booty  of  his  raids  and 
robberies,  and  perhaps  this  was  not  the  first  time  that  the 
honest  traders  of  Thurii  had  suffered  the  oppression  of 
being  forced  out  of  business  by  merchandising  marauders, 


j^3Q4  MAGNA  GR^CIA 

who  dealt  in  wares  that  cost  them  no  more  than  did  a 
draught  at  the  city's  Spring. 

Nothing  more  definite  can  yet  be  said  of  Thurii's  site 
than  that  it  was  somewhere  in  the  vicinity  of  Sybaris, 
on  the  Tarentine  Gulf. 

Strabo;  VI.  i.    i  13. 


213 

Medma 

The  city  of  Medma  within  sight  of  the  Lipari,  Homer's 
islands  of  i^olus,  appears  in  strange  contrast  with  that  of 
Locri,  for,  although  it  was  settled  by  people  from  that 
wide-awake  town,  it  furnished  but  very  few  lines  for  the 
pages  of  history. 

It,  however,  endured  long  after  many  of  its  more 
famous  neighbors,  and  still  existed  in  the  Vlth  century 
A.D.,  after  which  time  it  was  destroyed,  probably  by  the 
Saracens. 

Medma  took  its  name  from  a  fountain  of  which  even 
less  is  recorded  than  is  told  about  the  town;  it  is  described 
only  as  a  copious  fountain,  but  the  quality  as  well  as  the 
quantity  of  its  waters  seems  to  be  vouched  for  by  the 
length  of  the  life  of  the  settlement. 

Its  ruins  are  found  on  the  right  bank  of  the  present 
River  Mesima  below  the  town  of  Nicotera. 

Strabo;  VI.  I.     §  5. 


214 
LOCRIA 

The  first  settlement  of  the  Locrians  in  Magna  Graecia 
was  made  at  the  fountain  of  Locria,  about  710  B.C.;  but 


MAGNA  GR.ECIA  305 

some  three  or  four  years  later  another  site  was  selected, 
and  the  story  of  the  abandoned  fountain  is  lost. 

If  the  tale  should  ever  come  to  light,  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  it  will  furnish  more  savory  reading  than  the  record 
of  a  Spring  of  the  Locrians  in  Greece,  which  is  notorious 
for  the  stench  it  sent  forth,  and  still  emits,  and  which 
was  supposed  to  be  due  to  the  poisoned  body  of  the  Cen- 
taur Nessus  who  was  buried  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Taphiassus 
from  which  the  Spring,  which  formerly  contained  clots 
of  blood,  continues  to  issue.    (See  No.  178.) 

The  colonial  Locri  was  the  first  Grecian  city  to  put  its 
laws  in  writing,  and  to  set  in  them  fixed  penalties  and 
punishments  instead  of  leaving  such  to  the  discretion  of 
the  judges.  Zaleucus  devised  the  system,  but  others, 
attempting  to  extend  it  to  cover  all  possible  offenses, 
brought  it  into  disrepute,  as  it  was  contended  that  with 
many  laws  more  lawsuits  were  fostered,  just  as  sickness 
increased  with  the  number  of  physicians. 

Zaleucus  is  said  to  have  once  been  a  slave  shepherd. 
He  suffered  the  loss  of  an  eye  to  save  an  eye  of  his  son 
who  had  incurred  a  penalty  that  required  the  loss  of  two; 
and  he  killed  himself  because  he  had  violated  one  of  his 
own  laws. 

The  Locrians  were  celebrated  for  their  devotion  to  the 
Muses,  and  for  their  lyric  poetess,  Theano  of  the  Vth 
century  B.C. 

In  music  they  competed  successfully  with  the  greatest 
performers  in  Greece,  and,  in  one  instance,  under  a 
handicap  that  only  the  assistance  of  the  Muses  themselves 
could  have  overcome,  as  was  strikingly  portrayed  in  a 
statue  of  one  of  their  musicians,  Euriomus,  with  his  harp 
and  a  grasshopper  on  it,  which  immortalized  an  incident 
in  one  of  his  contests  at  the  Pythian  games  when,  a  string 
of  his  harp  having  broken,  a  grasshopper  alighted  on  the 


3p^  MAGNA  GR^CIA 

instrument  and,  supplying  the  sound  of  the  severed  string, 
enabled  him  to  win  the  prize. 

They  were  noted,  also,  for  their  athletes,  of  whom 
Euthymus,  who  laid  the  Temesa  ghost,  was  one.  And 
their  valor  in  war  was  shown  when  10,000  of  their  soldiers 
defeated  130,000  Crotoniats  on  the  banks  of  the  Sagras 
River,  and  made  "A  victory  of  the  Sagras  "  equivalent  to 
"incredible."  That  defeat  is  all  the  more  astonishing 
because,  only  a  generation  before,  the  army  of  Sybaris 
was  whipped  by  that  of  Crotona  when  outnumbered  three 
to  one.  But  even  more  remarkable  is  the  statement  that 
the  noise  of  this  battle  was  heard  in  Greece,  at  Olympia, 
during  the  celebration  of  the  games  that  were  being  held 
there  at  that  time.  The  victors  then,  however,  were  led 
by  their  strong  man  Milo,  who,  made  up  to  represent 
Hercules,  was  an  army  in  himself  and  performed  exploits 
as  remarkable  as  his  feat  of  eating  an  ox  which  he  had 
carried  around  the  stadiimi  of  Olympia  after  killing  it 
with  one  blow  of  his  fist.  At  another  time  he  reversed 
the  feat  of  Samson  and,  with  his  arms  as  pillars,  held  up 
a  falling  assembly  building  long  enough  to  enable  the 
company  to  make  their  escape  uninjured. 

Nothing  is  now  left  of  Locri  but  the  basement  of  a 
Doric  temple,  to  Proserpine,  that  houses  a  farmer's  family : 
it  is  near  the  sea  coast  and  some  five  miles  from  the 
modern  town  of  Gerace  by  the  River  S.  Ilario. 

Strabo;  VI.  i.    1 7. 


215 

The  Well  Lyca 

(Temesa) 

The  Well  Lyca  was  in  the  very  ancient  town  of 
Temesa,   or  Tempsa,  somewhat   south  of  the  present 


MAGNA  GR^CIA  307 

Lao  River,  a  stream  that  marked  the  northern  limits  of 
Bruttii. 

Homer  mentions  its  copper  mines  and  the  lucrative 
commerce  they  gave  it  with  over-ocean  countries. 

Even  earlier  still  it  was  known,  to  its  sorrow,  by  Ulysses 
as  it  was  in  later  times  by  Spartacus ;  and  there  seems  to 
be  no  record  of  any  period  when  the  climate  of  southern 
Italy,  and  its  adjunct  Sicily,  was  not  congenial  for  some 
description  of  pirate  or  bandit. 

The  Well  apparently  received  its  name  from  the  ghost 
Lycas,  and  was  connected  with  the  river  Calabrus,  from 
which  Laus  and  the  present  Lao  perhaps  come  by  lazy 
locutions. 

Pausanias  saw  the  Well  represented  in  a  painting  which 
was  a  copy  of  a  still  older  work  of  art.  The  picture,  in 
addition  to  the  Well  and  the  river,  and  the  town  of 
Temesa,  portrayed  the  Ghost,  dreadfully  swarthy  and 
most  formidable  in  appearance,  and  dressed  in  a  wolf- 
skin. 

The  legend  was,  as  expressed  in  the  painting,  that 
Odysseus,  when  on  his  adventureful  voyage  home  from 
Troy,  touched  at  Temesa  where  one  of  his  sailors  became 
intoxicated  and  offered  violence  to  a  maiden  in  the  town, 
with  the  result  that  the  people  stoned  him  to  death. 

Odysseus  probably  considered  it  a  case  of  tit-for-tat 
and  a  closed  incident,  and  he  sailed  away.  But  the  ghost 
of  the  sailor,  with  a  heart  as  wolfish  as  his  skin,  was  not  so 
easily  satisfied;  it  returned  and  persecuted  the  town  so 
relentlessly,  killing  indiscriminately  the  young  and  the 
old,  that  the  inhabitants  decided  to  abandon  the  place 
and  to  sail  away  from  Magna  Grsecia. 

The  Pythian  Priestess,  however,  bade  them  stay,  and 
commanded  them  to  build  a  temple  to  the  Ghost,  and  to 
give  it  yearly,  as  wife,  the  handsomest  girl  in  the  town; 


308  MAGNA  GR^CIA 

all  of  which  being  done,  the  persecutions  of  the  specter 
ceased. 

Afterwards,  in  476  B.C.,  the  athlete  and  boxer  Euthy- 
mus,  returning  victorious  from  the  contests  in  the  76th 
Olympiad,  landed  at  Temesa  on  his  way  home  to  Locri 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Peninsula,  and,  seeing  the  latest 
wife  of  the  Ghost  sitting  in  the  temple,  in  a  thick  grove 
of  wild  olives,  fell  madly  in  love  with  her,  and,  waiting 
till  midnight  when  the  Ghost  appeared,  attacked  him 
with  such  fury  that  the  Shade  fled  in  terror  and  dove  into 
the  sea,  or  perhaps  into  the  Well,  and  was  never  seen 
again. 

Euthymus  thereupon  married  the  Ghost's  widow  with 
great  pomp,  and  lived  to  an  advanced  old  age — in  fact, 
he  never  died,  but  left  mankind  "in  some  other  way, "  as 
the  legend  tantalizingly  puts  it.  There  is,  however,  a 
fascinating  pleasure  in  concluding  that  the  Ghost  could 
have  supplied  the  missing  links  in  the  mysterious  dis- 
appearance, and  could  have  explained  the  real  connec- 
tion between  itself  and  the  Well  that  seems  to  have 
acquired  its  name.  'v 

Euthymus  was  deified  by  command  of  the  Oracle  of 
Delphi,  and  had  two  statues  erected  to  him,  one  at  Locri 
and  the  other  at  Olympia;  and  it  was  considered  "the 
most  wonderful  circumstance  ever  known"  that  both 
statues  were  struck  by  lightning  on  the  same  day. 

Pausanias;  VI.  6. 
Phny;  VII.  48. 


216 

;  ,  Leuca 

lapyx,  that  one  of  Lycaon's  fifty  sons  who  gave  the 
present  Terra  D'Otranto  its  ancient  name  of  lapygia, 


MAGNA  GR^CIA  309 

may  be  supposed  to  have  taken  the  shortest  water  route 
by  which  it  can  be  reached  from  Greece,  crossing,  as  did 
Hercules,  where  the  opposite  shores  of  the  Adriatic  are 
within  forty  miles  of  each  other,  and  to  have  landed  near 
the  little  village  of  Leuca  on  the  headland  that  is  still 
called  Cape  Leuca. 

The  village  had  a  Spring  with  a  fetid  odor;  a  Spring 
that  owed  its  origin  to  the  feat  that  necessitated  the 
trip  Hercules  took  in  order  to  kill  twenty-four  monstrous 
snake-footed  giants.  They  v/ere  immortal  on  their 
native  soil  in  Greece,  and,  therefore,  Hercules  dragged 
them  from  it,  and  across  to  Leuca  where  he  killed 
them. 

The  surrounding  district  took  its  name  of  Leuternia 
from  their  presence,  and  the  streams  from  their  wounds 
gave  rise  to  the  Spring,  whose  unpleasant  odor  may 
explain  why  the  place  never  grew  beyond  the  limits  of  a 
hamlet,  while  other  settlements  in  lapygia  became  great 
and  celebrated  cities,  of  which  the  chief  was  Tarentum, 
whose  prosperity  and  progress  in  the  arts  and  in  letters, 
and  whose  subsequent  luxury  and  laziness  were  as  re- 
markable as  those  of  Sybaris. 

Tarentum  was  founded,  two  years  after  Sybaris,  by  the 
Spartan  Phalanthus  whom  an  oracle  directed  to  make  a 
city  where  he  saw  rain  from  a  clear  sky.  Becoming  de- 
spondent after  a  long  search  for  a  rainy  district  that  was 
cloudless,  he  lay  down  with  his  head  in  the  lap  of  his  wife, 
who,  in  monkey  fashion  explored  his  hair. 

While  thus  tenderly  engaged  she  wept  in  sympathy 
with  her  husband's  sorrows,  and  her  tears  falling  on  his 
face  revealed  the  oracle's  meaning,  and  indicated  the  site 
that  Phalanthus  was  seeking — for  his  wife's  name  was 
Clear  Sky,  ^thra. 

That  night  he  founded  Tarentum.    That  is  to  say,  he 


310  MAGNA  GR^CIA 

took  from  the  Barbarians  the  town  they  had  already  built 
there. 

From  that  inauspicious  beginning,  with  an  apparently 
impossible  riddle  for  solution,  an  unkempt  and  vermin- 
ous state  of  poverty  and  despondency,  desperation  and 
tears,  sprang  Tarentum,  which  became  a  wonder  of 
wealth  and  luxury;  a  case  in  curious  contrast  with  the 
history  of  the  two  dozen  giants,  practically  endowed  with 
immortality,  and  with  every  initial  prospect  of  unending 
greatness,  who  founded  nothing  better  than  a  village 
Spring  with  a  fetid  odor. 

Some  of  the  forms  of  luxury  enumerated  as  fads  of 
"Sybarites"  were  invented  at  Tarentum,  or,  more  prob- 
ably, were  introduced  there  by  exotic  Eastern  people  who 
were  attracted  by  its  enervating  climate,  which  gave  it  a 
record  for  indolence  that  has  never  yet  been  surpassed  if, 
as  is  said,  it  observed  more  holidays  and  festivals  than 
there  were  days  in  the  year. 

It  endured  several  centuries  longer  than  Sybaris,  but 
in  the  end  it  suffered  the  fate  of  all  other  Magna  Graecia 
cities,  and  by  B.C.  123  it  had  fallen  into  decay. 

It  was  plundered  of  its  works  of  art  and  its  vast  quan- 
tities of  gold  and  silver,  and  was  literally  pulled  to  pieces, 
so  that  hardly  a  trace  of  the  old  city  can  now  be  found. 

The  modern  town  that  bears  the  name  today  is  the  larg- 
est in  that  part  of  Italy,  but  it  easily  finds  accommodation 
in  the  space  that  the  ancient  town  allotted  to  its  citadel. 

Strabo;VI.  3.     J  5- 


217 

Ela 

The  city  of  Ela  was  so  called  from  an  excellent  foun- 
tain.   The  name  is  found  in  different  forms,  which  how- 


MAGNA  GR^CIA  311 

ever  always  retain  the  original  three  letters,  such  as,  Elea, 
Hyela,  and  Velia, 

The  town  was  originated  by  the  Phocaeans  in  540  B.C., 
and  a  system  of  philosophy,  and  a  Gulf  were  indebted  to 
the  fountain  for  their  designations;  the  Eleatic  Gulf  in 
the  nearby  coast ;  and  the  Eleatic  Philosophy  originated 
by  Xenophontes.  The  philosopher  wrote  a  poem  describ- 
ing the  founding  of  the  city,  but  that  work  has  been  lost 
with  such  pictures  and  praises  of  the  fountain  as  it  no 
doubt  presented. 

The  basic  theme  of  the  Eleatic  Philosophy  was  the 
oneness  of  the  Divinity.  Zeno  and  other  notables  were 
born  in  the  place,  which  was  described  as  an  inconsider- 
able city  that  was  nevertheless  capable  of  producing 
great  men. 

The  ruins  of  the  town  are  about  a  mile  and  a  half 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Alento  river,  the  ancient  Hales 
the  offspring  of  the  fountain. 

Strabo;  VI.  i.     §  i. 


i>-l 


ASIA  MINOR 

MYSIA 

218 
Caicus 

The  sources  of  the  Caicus  river  were  in  a  plain  near  the 
village  of  Gergitha. 

The  river  flowed  through  a  very  extensive  and  fertile 
country  and  entered  the  sea  thirty  stadia  from  Pitane 
where  was  the  dragon  that  Apollo  hardened  into  life-like 
stone,  at  the  moment  its  gaping  mouth  w;as  about  to 
snap  at  the  head  of  Orpheus  which  had  floated  through 
the  sea  from  Thrace. 

The  modern  Menduria  is  supposed  to  be  where  Ger- 
githa was,  and  the  Caicus  flows  into  the  bay  that  lies 
southeast  of  the  island  of  Lesbos  across  the  channel. 

It  was  at  the  mouth  of  the  Caicus  that  Auge  of  the 
Spring  of  Tegea  was  stranded  with  her  infant,  who 
became  king  of  the  country. 

According  to  one  account  the  Caicus  was  really  the 
Mysius  river  that,  tired  of  its  Spring  and  its  banks, 
plunged  into  the  earth  for  novelty  and  came  up  again  as 
a  new  Spring  that  was  called  Caicus. 

Strabo;  XIII.  I,     §70.  Ovid;  Meta.  XV.  line  275.     XI.    Fable  i. 

219 

ASTYRA 

The  Springs  of  Astyra  were  considered  remarkable 
because  they  produced  black  water. 


MYSIA  313 

The  water  was  hot  and  was  used  in  baths  in  the  Mysian 
town  of  Atarneus,  which  was  opposite  the  island  of 
Lesbos. 

The  town  was  acquired  by  the  people  of  the  island  of 
Chios,  in  546  B.C.,  as  a  reward  for  surrendering  to  the 
Medes  an  absconding  revenue  collector  named  Pactyas. 

Besides  the  Springs  of  peculiar  black  water,  the  town 
contained  a  temple  of  Artemis. 

The  present  village  of  Dikeli-Koi  is  supposed  to  occupy 
the  site  of  the  ancient  town. 

Pausanias;  IV.  35. 


220 

The  Royal  Fountain 

The  water  of  the  Royal  Fountain  was  warm  but  sweet. 

It  was  in  the  town  of  Prussa  at  the  northern  foot  of 
Mt.  Olympus  in  Mysia. 

The  warm  water  was  used  for  bathing  purposes,  and 
the  old  baths  are  still  in  existence. 

Atheneeus;  II.  17. 


221 

Dascylum 

The  fountain  of  the  village  of  Dascylum  was  described 
as  similar  to  the  Royal  fountain,  its  water  being  warm 
and  sweet;  but  neither  the  fountain  nor  the  village  has 
yet  been  located. 

Pausanias  says  it  was  in  Caria  in  a  plain  called  White, 
and  that  the  water  was  sweeter  to  drink  than  milk. 

Pliny;  V.  40. 
Pausanias;  IV.  35. 


314  ASIA  MINOR 

222 

The  Artacian  Fountain 

On  their  way  to  Colchis  to  get  the  golden  fleece  the 
flying  ram  had  given  to  his  rider  Phrixus,  the  Argonauts 
having  passed  through  the  Hellespont  and  into  the  Sea  of 
Marmora  landed  near  a  hilly  island  whose  eminence  was 
called  Arctos,  where  there  lived  a  lawless  race  having  six 
hands,  two  additional  hands  growing  on  each  side  below 
the  shoulders. 

The  landing  was  at  the  Artacian  Fountain,  which  per- 
haps took  its  name  from  Artaces  who  is  mentioned  as  the 
leader  of  one  of  the  local  tribes  only  normally  endowed 
with  hands,  but  no  particulars  are  given  in  regard  to  it 
save  that,  in  after  years,  a  settlement  was  founded  by  the 
Spring  and  became  the  suburb  of  the  large  and  thriving 
city  of  Cyzicus. 

Artaces  himself  unfortunately  lost  his  life  in  a  very 
strange  way  within  twenty-four  hours  of  the  Argonauts' 
landing,  which  was  apparently  made  for  the  purpose  of 
obtaining  a  heavier  anchor  than  the  one  they  had  on 
board,  one  which,  like  the  heavier  anchor  they  selected, 
was  a  stone ;  the  light  one,  which  they  threw  away  with- 
out ado  at  the  fountain,  subsequently  became  a  holy 
object  of  veneration,  and  was  set  up  in  the  temple  of 
Athena  where  it  was  called  "The  Fugitive  Stone," 
because  until  it  was  made  fast  with  metal  bonds,  it  had 
an  unanchorlike  tendency  to  run  away. 

While  the  crew  were  rigging  their  new  ground  tackle, 
a  party  of  well-disposed  people  of  the  neighborhood 
approached  and  advised  them  to  row  some  eight  miles 
farther  on,  to  the  town  of  Cyzicus,  and  accordingly,  when 
their  anchor  arrangements  were  completed,  they  pro- 
ceeded to  the  place  indicated  by  their  new-found  friends. 


MYSIA  315 

The  ancient  suburb  is  described  as  now  "the  miserable 
town  of  Erdek. " 

Apollonius  Rhodius;  I.  line  956. 


223 

Cleite 

The  town  of  Cyzicus,  circa  1263  B.C.,  was  a  new  one 
set  in  a  plain  about  the  hilly  island  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
Artacian  Fountain.  It  had  been  planned  by  and  named 
after  the  King  of  the  Doliones  who  had  met  the  Argon- 
auts at  the  Artacian  Fountain;  he  was  a  young  man, 
about  the  age  of  Jason  who  was  then  twenty  years  old; 
his  beard  was  just  sprouting,  and  he  had  only  a  few 
months  before  married  Cleite,  a  lovely  fair-haired  girl,  a 
daughter  of  the  King  of  Rhindacus  who  was  a  celebrated 
soothsayer  named  Merops. 

Cyzicus  afterwards  became  a  splendid  city  noted  for 
its  buildings  of  white  marble,  and  for  its  temple  whose 
walls,  of  the  same  material,  were  pointed  up  with  gold 
instead  of  mortar;  for  the  beauty  and  value  of  its  gold 
coinage;  and  for  the  production  of  a  popular  perfume 
called  Cyzican  ointment. 

The  Spring  of  Cleite  gives  ample  proof  that  there  were 
at  one  time  some  who  grieved  o'er  others'  griefs  sincerely, 
and  that  the  nymphs  of  Mysia  were  no  less  tender-hearted 
than  those  of  Phrygia  who  saw  Marsyas  flayed. 

When  they  reached  the  town,  the  Argonauts  were 
made  welcome  and  were  given  a  banquet,  and  their  stores 
were  replenished  with  sundry  provisions,  among  which 
was  included  a  plentiful  supply  of  "Sweet  Mead"  which 
apparently  served  the  prehistoric  pirate  in  place  of  the 
rum  of  his  counterpart  of  later  periods,  for  mead,  not- 


3i6  ASIA  MINOR 

withstanding  its  soft  name,  seems  to  have  provoked 
pugnacity  and  bleared  the  eye  as  readily  as  rum;  even  on 
the  eve  of  the  outset  of  the  voyage,  after  a  few  draughts 
of  it  one  of  the  crew,  Idas,  called  Jason  a  coward,  and 
offered  to  fight  a  god  if  one  would  show  himself;  and 
Idmon,  another  member  of  the  band,  called  Idas  a 
fool;  and  only  the  intervention  of  some  of  the  others 
and  the  soothing  melodies  of  the  lyre  of  Orpheus  averted 
a  fight. 

At  dawn  of  the  day  following  the  banquet,  the  voyage 
was  resumed,  but  at  the  mouth  of  the  harbor  they  were 
ambushed  by  the  men  of  half  a  dozen  hands,  who  had 
endeavored  to  block  the  channel  with  rocks  and  prevent 
the  Argo's  exit.  A  few  of  the  crew,  however,  led  by  Her- 
cules, soon  killed  every  member  of  the  band,  and  the 
boat  proceeded  on  its  way. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  a  violent  storm  arose,  and  during 
the  night  they  were  blown  ashore  where,  on  landing,  they 
were  hotly  assailed  by  the  inhabitants,  several  of  whom 
were  slain  before  they  could  be  driven  off. 

By  the  dim  light  that  struggled  through  the  heavy 
storm  clouds  after  daybreak,  they  discovered  to  their 
infinite  amazement  and  chagrin  that  the  men  they  had 
killed  were  some  of  their  late  hosts,  among  whom  was 
Cyzicus  himself,  and  also  Artaces.  In  the  double  dark- 
ness of  the  storm  and  the  night,  the  Argonauts  had  not 
recognized  the  island,  to  which  they  had  been  blown  back, 
and  neither  they  nor  the  other  party  saw  that  they  were 
fighting  with  friends. 

Both  sides  were  plunged  in  grief  at  the  terrible  mis- 
fortune, and  the  young  wife  in  her  anguish  hanged  herself, 
an  additional  awful  deed  that  harrowed  the  feelings  of 
even  the  wood  nymphs;  and  the  innumerable  tears  of 
those  gentle  and  sympathetic  beings  saturated  the  earth 


MYSIA  317 

which  spouted  them  forth  as  a  Spring  that  men  called  by 
the  storied  name  of  Cleite. 

Some  of  the  foundations  of  Cyzicus  are  still  faintly 
traceable  in  the  present  cherry  orchards  and  the  vine- 
yards in  the  vicinage  of  the  village  of  Bal  Kiz,  in  whose 
last  syllable  may  also  be  faintly  traced  a  kind  of  ruin  of 
part  of  the  name  of  the  ancient  city. 

The  Spring  of  Cleite  was  also  called  Cupido. 

Apollonius  Rboditis;  I.  line  1865. 


224 

Jason's  Spring 

The  terrible  storm,  that  drove  the  Argonauts  back  to 
Cyzicus  with  such  sad  results,  continued  with  unabated 
fury  for  twelve  long  dreary  days  and  nights,  during  which, 
the  usual  funeral  rites  having  been  performed,  the  leader- 
less  people  seemed  to  lose  all  interest  in  life,  taking  no 
thought  of  aught  but  their  bitter  grief.  Their  ordinary 
occupations  ceased,  the  housewives  prepared  no  meals, 
and  such  as  eat  a  few  mouthfuls  partook  of  uncooked 
food. 

And  during  all  that  time  the  Cyzicans  continued  their 
lamentations,  and  the  wood  nymphs  in  their  softer  strain 
poured  forth  their  grief  and  fed  the  fountain  of  Cleite. 

At  the  end  of  the  twelfth  day,  however,  the  shrill  note 
of  the  fair-weather  Kingfisher  was  heard  again,  and  the 
Argonauts  immediately  repaired  to  one  of  the  neighboring 
heights  of  the  Dindymus  range,  to  offer  sacrifice  to  Rhea 
and  beseech  her  to  hasten  the  end  of  the  violent  winds — 
and  during  all  of  the  ceremonies  they  were  obliged  to 
beat  their  bucklers  with  their  swords  to  drown  the  lugu- 
brious sounds  of  the  islanders'  mourning  wails. 


3i8  ASIA  MINOR 

Having  besought  the  goddess  to  give  them  a  sign  that 
their  sacrifice  was  acceptable  and  that  she  would  be  propi- 
tious, the  kindly  deity  vouchsafed  them  several  signs, 
the  most  practical  and  useful  of  which  was  the  gushing 
forth  of  a  Spring  on  the  hill  of  Dindymus,  which  had 
always  theretofore  been  dry  and  fountless — and  that 
Spring  came  to  be  called  Jason's  Spring. 

As  the  Spring  bubbled  up  and  babbled  cheerily  down 
the  hillside,  the  winds  were  hushed  and  the  delayed 
voyagers  lost  no  time  in  following  the  streamlet  to  the 
shore  and  rowing  away  on  the  long  and  gentle  swells 
with  which  the  bosom  of  the  sea  rose  and  fell  in  the  quiet 
sleep  that  followed  its  exhausting  fortnight's  fury. 

As  there  seems  to  be  no  subsequent  mention  of  this 
Spring,  it  is  possible  that  when  it  had  served  its  purpose, 
as  one  of  the  signs,  the  mountain  reverted  to  its  previous 
dryness. 

Apollonius  Rhodius;  I.  line  114S. 


225 

Perperena 

The  Spring  at  Perperena  petrified  the  ground  wherever 
the  water  touched  it. 

Perperena  is  one  of  several  places  at  which  the  historian 
Thucydides  is  said  to  have  come  to  his  end  about  401 
B.C. ;  and  a  neighboring  mountain  called  Alexandreia  was 
said  to  have  been  where  the  three  goddesses  met  in  con- 
tention for  the  beauty  prize  awarded  by  Paris. 

The  town  was  southeast  of  Adramyttium  near  the 
Caicus  river,  but  there  are  no  ancient  remains  even  of 
the  latter  and  more  important  place. 

Pliny;  Nat.  Hist.   XXXI.  20. 


BITHYNIA 

226 

Peg^ 

The  Argonauts,  in  their  eagerness  to  put  so  much  sea 
between  themselves  and  sorrowing  Cyzicus  that  no  storm 
could  blow  them  back  to  the  sound  of  its  sighs  and  sob- 
bings, rowed  with  a  vigor  that,  before  nightfall,  completely 
exhausted  the  energies  of  all  but  hardy  Hercules,  who, 
long  after  the  others  had  laid  aside  their  oars  in  utter 
fatigue,  continued  to  force  the  vessel  forward  in  laboring 
plunges  that  made  her  timbers  creak  and  groan  at  every 
stroke.  No  single  oar,  however,  could  bear  the  strain 
indefinitely,  and  in  the  middle  of  one  giant  pull  the  over- 
tasked ash  broke  at  the  tholepin,  and  drifted  far  behind 
in  the  frothing  wake  while  the  hero  was  being  assisted  to 
raise  his  bulk  from  the  bottom  of  the  boat. 

The  hastily  organized  expedition,  composed  for  the 
most  part  of  soldiers,  soothsayers  and  farmers,  was  pro- 
vided with  no  spare  parts  and  was  therefore  under  the 
necessity  of  going  ashore  again  to  make  another  oar  to 
replace  the  one  the  sturdy  strokes  of  Hercules  had 
broken.  The  landing  for  this  purpose  was  made  at  the 
mouth  of  the  river  Cios,  and  Hercules,  glad  enough  of  a 
respite  from  the  raillery  of  his  friends,  immediately 
plunged  into  the  forest  to  select  a  suitable  tree  from 
which  to  make  a  strong  man's  oar. 

In  the  meantime,  his  young  friend  Hylas,  solicitous 
about  the  hero's  supper,  took  a  brazen  pitcher  and  went 

319 


320  ASIA  MINOR 

into  the  woods  to  find  a  sacred  Spring,  for  water  with 
which  to  prepare  the  evening  meal.  Beneath  the  crest  of 
Mt.  Arganthus  he  found  the  fountain  of  Pegae,  a  Hquid 
abode  loved  by  the  Thynian  nymphs.  Around  it  grew 
many  rushes;  the  pale  blue  swallow- wort ;  the  green 
maidenhair;  and  blooming  parsley  and  couch  grass. 

Over  it,  from  the  boughs  of  the  trees  of  the  wilderness, 
hung  dewy  apples ;  and  in  the  meadow  it  mothered  there 
rose  fair  lilies  grouped  with  purple  poppies. 

The  fountain  was  presided  over  by  an  aesthetic  nymph 
who  was  just  rising  from  the  lovely  Spring  as  Hylas 
approached  along  the  path  where  it  was  lit  by  a  beam 
of  the  warm  June  moon  that  shone  through  an  opening  in 
the  forest  foliage,  and  clearly  revealed  his  curly  auburn 
locks,  and  the  sweet  grace  and  blush  of  his  beauteous 
body,  a  boyish  beauty  that  had  so  attracted  Hercules 
that  he  killed  his  father  to  obtain  him. 

All  unconscious  of  the  presence  of  the  admiring  naiad, 
Hylas  kneeled  at  the  brink  of  the  Spring,  and,  as  he  bent 
over  and  plunged  the  pitcher  through  the  sparkling 
bubbles,  the  amorous  nymph  laid  her  left  arm  on  his 
neck  while  with  her  right  she  plucked  him  by  the  elbow 
and  drew  him  under  the  rippling  surface,  in  a  longing  to 
kiss  his  soft  lips. 

Hercules,  returning  with  a  tree  that  he  had  pulled  up 
to  make  his  new  oar  from,  heard  of  Hylas'  absence  with 
great  concern  and  at  once  plunged  back  into  the  forest 
on  a  night-long  but  futile  search  for  his  favorite,  who  was 
never  seen  again. 

Before  daybreak,  a  favoring  wind  sprang  up  and  the 
Argo  put  to  sea  and  was  well  on  her  way  before  it  was 
noted  by  some  of  the  crew  that  Hercules  had  been  left 
behind.  Mead,  no  doubt,  played  a  latent  part  in  this 
very  unfriendly  trick,  and  afterwards  a  jealous  clique 


BITHYNIA  321 

prevented  putting  the  ship  back  by  meeting  those  who 
favored  that  course  with  many  arguments ;  some  alleged 
it  was  unjust  to  keep  the  hero  from  his  work  in  Argos 
where  his  twelve  labors  were  still  unfinished,  and  others 
brazenly  asserted  that  he  was  a  deserter.  And  so  the 
ship  was  kept  upon  her  course. 

Hercules  will,  however,  receive  little  sympathy  for 
being  left  behind  when  it  is  recalled  that,  if  his  eloquence 
and  sarcasm  had  measured  up  to  his  strength,  he  would 
have  secured  the  abandonment  of  Jason  at  Lemnos  where, 
in  a  long  speech,  he  tried  to  persuade  the  company  to 
sail  away  and  leave  the  leader  "to  repeople  the  island." 

The  people  about  Pegae  left  no  stone  unturned  in  the 
hunt  for  Hylas  whom  they  had  every  incentive  to  find, 
for  when  Hercules  finally  left  to  resume  his  work  for 
Eurystheus  he  took  with  him  as  hostages  the  sons  of  the 
noblest  people,  and  exacted  from  them  an  oath  that  they 
would  never  cease  from  the  search  until  the  boy  or  his 
body  was  found.  As  Hercules  kept  the  child  hostages 
in  the  town  of  Trachin  while  the  nymph  kept  Hylas  in 
the  fountain  of  Pegae,  the  people  pursued  their  search  in 
no  perfunctory  way,  and  for  a  long  time  their  salutation 
was,  "Have  you  seen  Hylas?"  Even  twelve  hundred 
years  later,  that  oath  to  Hercules  was  respected,  and  the 
inhabitants  kept  a  festival  during  which  they  wandered 
through  the  woods  about  the  mountain  calling  on  Hylas 
by  name,  as  if  in  search  of  him. 

A  similar  story  is  related  of  Bormus  a  beautiful  youth ' 
of  Bithynia  whom  the  nymphs  drew  into  a  fountain  that 
may  have  been  PegaB  itself.  Bormus  was  the  son  of  a 
rich  and  illustrious  man  named  Upius,  and  was  far  supe- 
rior to  all  of  his  fellows  in  beauty  and  in  vigor  of  youth. 
His  popularity  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  it  became  a 


322  ASIA  MINOR 

national  custom  of  the  Bithynians  to  go  about,  as  if  seek- 
ing the  youth,  chanting  a  dirge  or  invocation  with  an 
accompaniment  of  flutes;  this  occurred  every  year  at 
harvest  time,  for  it  was  during  the  reaping  season  that 
Bormus  was  kidnaped  by  the  nymphs. 

This  Spring,  the  source  of  the  river  the  poets  call 
Crudelis,  has  been  taken  for  the  Ascanius  Lake  the  source 
of  the  Ascanius  River;  but  to  accept  this  would  require 
that  faith  which  is  said  to  be  able  to  move  mountains; 
for  the  Spring  was  under  the  crest  of  Mt.  Arganthus 
which  is  north  of  Cius,  while  Lake  Ascanius  is  southeast 
of  that  place  and  some  distance  away. 

Cius,  a  town  named  after  a  shipmate  and  friend,  of 
Hercules,  who  founded  it  on  his  way  back  from  Colchis, 
was  afterwards  called  Prusias,  and  is  now  Brusa  on  the 
Bay  of  Gemlik. 

ApoUonius  Rhodius;  I.  line  865  and  1309. 
Athenseus;  XIV.  11. 
Theocritus;  Idyll  XIII.  line  39. 
Strabo;  XII.  4*    i  3> 


227 

The  Spring  of  Amycus 

The  ship  of  the  Argonauts  made  a  stop  for  replenish- 
ment on  the  southern  shore  of  the  Euxine  Sea,  in  the 
territory  of  the  Bebrycians  in  Bithynia,  and  the  crew 
were  soon  busily  engaged  in  foraging  explorations  through 
the  nearby  country. 

Castor  and  Pollux,  while  covering  the  sector  assigned 
to  them,  having  reached  the  base  of  a  mountain  and 
penetrated  into  the  midst  of  a  wild  forest  of  vast  size, 
came  suddenly  upon  an  ever-flowing  Spring  under  a 
smooth  cliff.    Through  its  pure  water  the  pebbles  in  its 


BITHYNIA  323 

depths  seemed  like  crystal,  or  silver;  and  its  basin  was 
surrounded  by  tall  pines  and  poplars,  and  planes,  and 
cypresses  with  lofty  tops;  and  among  the  trees  grew 
fragrant  flowers,  pleasant  workshops  for  hairy  bees, 
flowers  as  many  as,  when  the  Spring  is  ending,  sprout  up 
along  the  meadows. 

So  engrossed  were  the  brothers,  in  the  contemplation 
of  this  unexpected  paradise  in  the  wilderness,  that  it  was 
not  until  a  deep  grunt  of  mixed  defiance  and  inquiry 
simimoned  their  attention,  that  they  became  conscious 
of  another  presence  in  the  charming  nook;  the  presence 
of  a  man  of  overwhelming  size  and  forbidding  appear- 
ance who  evidently  resented  the  approach  of  the  in- 
truders, and  whose  biceps,  like  stones  rounded  by  rolling 
through  a  river,  and  iron-textured  flesh,  showing  scars  and 
numerous  limips,  clearly  indicated  his  pugiHstic  calling. 

Of  this  no  doubt  was  left  when  the  brothers,  asstmiing 
the  native's  presumptive  ownership  of  the  Spring,  and 
his  ill-nature,  offered  payment  for  the  privilege  of  a 
draught. 

Their  offer  was  immediately  and  sullenly  declined;  if 
they  desired  a  drink,  it  must  be  fought  for  in  a  boxing 
contest,  the  loser  of  which  should  become  the  winner's 
slave. 

As  such  a  contest  was  only  too  much  to  the  liking  of 
Pollux,  and  as  the  Argo's  sailing  was  not  to  be  delayed, 
there  were  few  moments  lost  in  the  preparations. 

The  friends  of  the  sullen  native,  who  proved  to  be 
Amycus  a  son  of  Neptune,  and  the  crew  of  the  ship,  were 
summoned  with  shout  and  by  horn,  and  as  soon  as  they 
were  assembled,  the  match  began. 

Of  this  fight  to  a  finish,  in  1263  B.C.,  almost  every  shift 
and  every  blow,  with  its  resultant  gory  or  puffed  effect,  is 
minutely  recorded  down  to  the  knockout,  which  was  de- 


324  ASIA  MINOR 

livered  by  Pollux  a  few  seconds  after  a  well-placed  hook 
below  the  temple  of  Amycus. 

Only  the  timekeeper's  report  is  lacking,  as  it  is,  regret- 
tably, in  all  ancient  sports  whose  records  would  otherwise 
be  interesting  and  instructive  in  comparison  with  those 
of  modern  courses  and  arenas;  but  no  doubt  if  Pollux  was 
thirsty  at  the  beginning,  he  thoroughly  enjoyed  his  well- 
earned  draught,  from  the  silver  pebble  Spring;  at  the  finish. 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  even  Castor  and  Pollux 
could  now,  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  three  thousand 
years,  retrace  their  forage  ramblings  in  the  wild  forest 
and  point  out  this  particular  Spring. 

Theocritus;  Idyll  XXII.  line  35. 


228 
AZARITIA 

The  fountain  of  Azaritia  was  above  the  city  of  Chalce- 
don,  apparently  near  the  coast  of  the  Bosphorus. 

It  was  said  to  breed  small  crocodiles. 

The  location  is  in  about  latitude  40°  which  is  perhaps 
somewhat  farther  north  than  the  saurian  of  today  chooses 
for  his  haunts,  and  one  might  be  inclined  to  speculate 
as  to  whether  some  hasty  and  superficial  observer  might 
mistake  a  tadpole  for  a  very  young  crocodile. 

Strabo;  XII.  4-5  2. 


229 

Pliny's  Bithynian  Springs 

The  fondness  of  Pliny  the  Younger  for  fountains  and 
water  in  his  private  villas  was  equally  noticeable  in  his 
official  life;  thus,  at  one  time  he  secured  the  office  of 


BITHYNIA  325 

Curator  of  the  banks  and  the  channel  of  the  River  Tiber ; 
and  at  another  time  when,  in  103  a.d.,  he  was  appointed 
Propraetor  in  Bithynia,  which  had  then  become  a  Roman 
Province  called  Pontica,  he  immediately  became  in- 
terested in  the  Province's  Department  of  Water  Works. 

He  was  sent  to  the  district  to  correct  many  rampant 
abuses  by  criminals  in  the  service  of  the  State,  and  to 
trace  items  illegally  paid  out  of  the  public  funds ;  to  put 
an  end  to  special  kinds  of  bribery,  and  to  correct  mis- 
carriages of  justice ;  but  among  his  first  communications 
from  Bithynia,  to  the  Emperor  Trajan,  is  the  announce- 
ment that  he  has  personally  visited  a  splendidly  clear 
Spring  from  which  he  desires  permission  to  build  an 
aqueduct  to  carry  its  water  to  the  capital  city,  Nicomedia, 
which,  although  it  had  paid  the  equivalent  of  $195,000 
on  account  of  two  aqueducts,  had  nothing  to  show  for 
the  amount  but  some  ruinous  arches  and  fake  masonry. 

This  project  was  followed  with  plans  for  constructing 
public  baths  at  each  end  of  the  district,  at  Prussa  and  at 
Sinope,  to  which  latter  place  the  water  had  to  be  brought 
from  a  Spring  sixteen  miles  away. 

Another  ambitious  water  improvement  was  the  making 
of  a  canal  to  extend  the  traffic  of  a  river  to  a  lake,  without 
draining  the  lake;  for  the  accomplishment  of  which  he 
submitted  a  scheme,  the  like  of  which  was  adopted  in 
Europe  in  1916,  to  run  the  canal  from  the  side  of  the  river 
where  navigation  stopped,  and  to  transfer  the  freight  across 
the  narrow  strip  of  ground  between  the  river  and  the 
canal  whose  water  from  the  lake  was  thus  retained  intact. 

The  letters,  however,  do  not  locate  the  Springs  defi- 
nitely, nor  tell  of  the  outcome  of  the  projects,  or  of  what 
effect  financing  them  had  on  the  rate  of  interest,  which  at 
that  time  in  Bithynia  was  twelve  per  cent,  a  month. 

Pliny  the  Youngei ;  X.  letter  XXXIX. 


PAPHLAGONIA 

230 
Paphlagonian  Fountain 

There  was  a  very  popular  fountain  in  Paphlagonia 
which  was  much  resorted  to  because  its  water  had  a 
flavor  of  wine. 

Paphlagonia  covered  a  territory  of  eight  hundred 
square  miles  between  the  Parthenius  River  on  the  west 
and  the  Halys  River  on  the  east,  and  it  is  now  as  difficult 
to  locate  the  vinous  fountain  as  it  is  to  find  the  marvelous 
Paphlagonian  fishing  grounds  where  it  was  only  necessary 
to  dig  into  the  earth  to  catch  fish. 

The  birds  of  the  neighborhood  are,  however,  of  more 
living  interest,  as,  besides  having  two  hearts,  they  gave 
the  key  to  the  origin  of  human  music,  to  Chamaeleon,  the 
philosopher  of  Heracleia,  who  conceived  that  the  art  had 
its  beginning  in  man's  idling  attempts  to  imitate  the  wild 
birds'  notes  and  melodies. 

The  Parthenius  River  had  its  source  in  Paphlagonia  and 
flowed  through  a  district  abounding  in  flowers;  if  that 
source  was  the  Spring  alluded  to  its  enticing  taste  might 
very  well  have  been  due  to  a  tincture  of  the  plants  or 
their  roots. 

Athenzus;  II.  17.     VIII.  4. 


326 


PONTUS 

231 

Thermodon 

The  moods  of  nature  are  no  less  obvious  than  those  of 
man  and  the  brute. 

Though  springing  from  the  same  chemical  causes, 
they  are  perforce  manifested  in  different  ways ;  but  what 
is  told  by  the  wagging  tail  of  the  dog  expresses  satisfac- 
tion no  less  clearly  than  the  same  sensation  when  con- 
veyed by  the  wagging  tongue  of  a  man. 

Unrest  and  excitement  in  Nature  are  understood  by  all, 
in  the  storm  and  the  earthquake,  as  are  her  loves  and 
hates  in  chemical  attractions  and  repulsions. 

Others  can  recognize  her  sorrow,  in  the  overcast  sky ; 
her  tears,  in  the  rain;  her  sympathy,  in  the  healing  balm 
that  covers  the  wound  of  the  tree ;  her  fear,  in  the  shrink- 
ing shiver  of  the  leaves  whipped  by  the  winds ;  her  courage, 
in  the  steadfast  rock  lashed  by  the  stormy  waves;  her 
pride,  in  the  mountain  peak,  unmeasured  and  unsealed; 
and  her  joy,  in  the  sparkle  of  the  sun  and  a  bright  blue 
sky. 

Others,  again,  may  find  in  the  juggler  deftly  circling  his 
head  with  hand-tossed  balls,  only  a  weak  attempt  to 
imitate  Nature's  skill  in  sport  with  countless  starry 
spheres ;  or  see  in  her  so-called  freaks,  her  vein  of  humor 
and  jocosity,  as  though  she,  also,  relished  a  little  nonsense 
now  and  then. 

Two  instances  of  such  humor  were  manifested  by 

327 


328  ASIA  MINOR 

Nature  in  the  Springs  of  the  rivers  Tearus  and  Thermodon 
as,  from  the  thirty-eight  Springs  of  the  former  she  made 
one  single  river,  while  she  formed  ninety-six  rivers  from 
the  solitary  Spring  of  the  Thermodon. 

This  Spring  rose  in  a  mountain  of  the  Amazons,  and 
had  no  counterpart  in  all  the  world.  Its  stream  spread 
through  a  country  of  hills,  and,  striking  the  base  of  one 
hill  became  two  rivers;  these,  in  turn,  were  split  by  other 
hills;  and  so  on,  to  such  numbers  that  no  man  knew  them 
all.  Many  of  them  lost  themselves  in  the  sands,  but  the 
others,  after  ranging  widely  through  the  land  of  Themis- 
cyra,  drew  together  in  a  plain  and  discharged  an  arching 
flood  of  foam  into  the  cheerless  Pontus — where  now  the 
Thermeh  of  Cappadocia  falls  into  the  Black  Sea. 

ApoUonius  Rhodius;  II.  line  973. 


232 

Cainochorion 

The  Spring  of  Cainochorion  rose  on  the  summit  of  a 
ridge  of  precipitous  rocks,  and  threw  up  an  abundance  of 
water.  As  the  ridge  was  very  high,  and  almost  impreg- 
nable to  attack,  it  was  enclosed  with  a  wall  and  was  for- 
tified by  the  unpoisonable  Mithridates,  Cicero's  greatest 
of  kings  (after  Alexander),  and  used  as  a  treasury  for  his 
accumulations  of  paintings,  statues  and  precious  stones, 
which,  finally,  were  captured  by  Pompey  and  taken  to 
Rome  to  grace  its  Capitol. 

•!;■ '  This  Spring  was  less  than  twenty-five  miles  from 
Cabeira  where  Mithridates  had  a  fortified  palace,  a  park 
filled  with  wild  animals  for  the  chase,  and  some  mines  and 
a  watermill. 

About  thirty  miles  from  Nikzar  there  is  today  a  high 


PONTUS  329 

perpendicular  rock,  almost  inaccessible  on  every  side, 
with  a  stream  of  water  flowing  from  its  top;  and  this  is 
supposed  to  be  the  still  youthful  Spring  of  Cainochorion, 
and  the  site  of  the  old  king's  treasury. 

Strabo;  XII.  3-     §3i. 


Apollonia 

At  Apollonia  in  Pontus  there  was  to  be  seen  near  the 
seashore  a  fountain  that  overflowed  in  summer  only,  and 
mostly  about  the  time  of  the  rising  of  the  Dogstar.  The 
warmer  the  summer,  the  more  the  fountain  flowed,  and 
the  milder  the  season  the  less  abundant  the  water  the 
Spring  supplied. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  28.     5  4. 


234 

PHAZEMONITiE 

The  Hot  Springs  of  Phazemonitae  in  Pontus  were  highly 
salubrious. 

Pompey  changed  the  name  of  the  place  to  Neapolis, 
and  the  modern  baths  of  Cauvsa  are  supposed  to  be  the 
old  and  salubrious  Springs. 

Strabo;  XII.  3.    §  38. 


LYDIA 
235 

NiOBE 

The  Spring  of  Niobe,  in  combination  with  her  own  sad 
monument  of  woe,  was  the  most  elaborate  of  all  the 
conceptions  of  fountains  of  transformed  women;  for,  in 
addition  to  the  Spring  that  was  fed  by  her  tears,  the 
mountain  from  which  it  issued  formed  a  portrait  statue 
of  the  grief -stricken  mother. 

Niobe,  the  daughter  of  Tantalus  and  the  sister  of 
Pelops,  became  the  wife  of  Amphion  the  musical  mason 
and  monarch  of  Thebes. 

Blessed  with  a  number  of  beautiful  children,  and  proud 
of  her  royal  descent  and  connections,  she  openly  boasted 
of  her  lineage,  her  wealth,  her  beauty  and  her  fourteen 
handsome  children;  she  declared  that  plenty  had  made 
her  secure,  and  that  she  was  too  great  for  fortune  to  hurt ; 
in  addition,  she  made  invidious  comparisons  between 
herself  and  Latona;  whereupon,  almost  immediately,  that 
Goddess  caused  the  death  of  all  her  children.  As  the 
youngest  and  last  was  stricken,  Niobe  turned  to  stone, 
but  still  she  wept  on,  and,  enveloped  in  a  hurricane  of 
mighty  wind,  she  was  borne  away  to  the  top  of  Mt. 
Sipylus  in  her  native  land,  and  there,  fixed  on  the  moun- 
tain top,  the  stone  continued  to  distill  tears. 

Fifteen  centuries  after  the  occurrence,  the  statue-like 
stone  was  described  as  still  representing  a  woman  all 
tears  and  with  dejected  mien;  and  eighteen  centuries 

330 


LYDIA  331 

later,  modem  travelers  are  agreed  that  the  phantom  of 
Niobe  may  be  plainly  made  out  from  one  particular  point 
of  view  on  the  ancient  mountain  a  short  distance  north 
of  Smyrna,  beyond  Magnesia  the  peculiar  property  of 
whose  stones  gave  name  to  the  magnet. 

Pausanias;  I.  31. 

Ovid;  Meta.  VI.    Fable  3. 


236 

Hypel^us 

The  fountain  of  Hypelaeus  led  to  the  founding  of  the 
city  of  Ephesus. 

A  party  of  people,  in  search  of  a  new  place  to  settle  at, 
being  unable  to  agree  upon  a  site,  at  last  resorted  to  the 
oracle  and  requested  that  it  would  designate  a  suitable 
location  for  their  purposes. 

In  reply,  they  were  told  to  build  a  city  in  a  place  that  a 
fish  would  show  them  and  to  which  a  wild  boar  would 
guide  them. 

With  what  was  either  the  best  of  judgment  or  a  very 
fortunate  chance,  the  party  soon  afterwards  gathered 
about  the  crew  of  a  fishing  boat  who  were  cooking  their 
breakfast  around  the  fountain  of  Hypelaeus.  While  they 
were  watching  the  preparation  of  the  meal,  a  hot  cinder, 
thrown  out  by  the  sputtering  green  wood  fire,  fell  on  one 
of  the  fish  in  a  nearby  pile,  and  the  fish,  with  the  cinder 
sticking  to  it,  flopped  into  some  oily  refuse  that  at  once 
blazed  up  and  set  lire  to  an  adjoining  thicket  that  con- 
cealed a  wild  boar.  The  startled  boar  darted  out  into  the 
open  and  made  for  the  mountainside  but,  struck  by  a 
well-thrown  javelin,  fell  and  expired  on  the  spot  where 
the  Athenaeum,  the  Temple  of  Minerva,  was  afterwards 
erected. 


332  ASIA  MINOR 

This  so-called  settlement,  which  endured  until  the  time 
of  Croesus,  seems  to  have  been  the  one  made  by  Androclus 
by  driving  out  the  descendants  of  the  Leleges  and  the 
people  who  had  settled  the  place  long  before,  in  the  time 
of  the  Amazons. 

After  the  time  of  Croesus  or  about  560  B.C.,  the  settle- 
ment was  moved  to  lower  ground  where  the  temple  stood. 
In  the  time  closely  following  Alexander,  Lysimachus 
built  a  wall  around  the  temple,  and  induced  the  unwilling 
inhabitants  to  move  again,  by  blocking  up  the  sewers 
during  the  next  heavy  rain  that  followed  their  lefusal. 
The  incident  may  have  had  some  connection  with  the 
peoples'  objection  to  adopting  "Arsinoe, "  the  name  of 
one  of  Lysimachus'  wives,  in  place  of  "Ephesus,"  and 
with  the  separation  of  the  city  from  the  temple  by  the 
interval  of  a  mile.  Cleophylus,  in  his  "Annals  of  the 
Ephesians,"  gives  the  account  of  the  fish  and  the  fire, 
and  the  modern  traveler  Hamilton,  in  his  Researches, 
confirms  at  least  the  fountain  part  of  the  story  by  his 
statement  that  he  saw  the  Spring  in  his  travels  in  Asia 
Minor. 

Strabo;XIV.  i.     §4. 
Athenseus;  VIII.  62. 


237 

Calippia 

The  Spring  Calippia  mentioned  by  Pliny  is  doubtless 
the  Well  Alitaea,  or  Halitaea  that  Pausanias  says  was  near 
Ephesus,  and  it  may  be  assumed  was  the  sacred  water  of 
the  Temple  of  Artemis  (Diana)  one  of  the  seven  wonders 
of  the  world,  and  the  same  beautiful  Spring  that  still 
rises  some  200  yards  north  of  the  site  of  the  sacred 
edifice. 


LYDIA  333 

There  is  no  account  of  how  the  Spring  was  connected 
with  the  fane,  but  the  city,  which  was  nearly  a  mile  from 
the  temple,  was  connected  to  it  by  a  rope  to  indicate  that 
it  was  dedicated  to  the  goddess. 

St.  Paul,  who  in  57  a.d.  founded  at  Ephesus  one  of  the 
celebrated  seven  churches  of  Asia,  lived  there  two  years 
and  wrought  many  miracles,  bringing  the  Holy  Ghost  to 
his  disciples,  and  making  them  prophets,  and  personally 
healing  the  sick,  and  casting  out  evil  spirits.  In  The  Acts 
there  is  an  enlightening  indication  of  the  ramification  of 
prejudices  Christianity  had  to  overcome ;  the  silversmiths 
opposed  it  on  trade  grounds,  because  it  threatened  to 
affect  the  demand  for  images  of  the  heathen  Diana 
which  they  made  for  the  temple  and  its  votaries  and- 
visitors. 

Ephesus  was  the  home  of  the  noble  youths,  Constan- 
tine,  Dionysius,  John,  Maximian,  Malchus,  Martinian 
and  Seraphion,  who  are  known  as  the  Seven  Sleepers, 
from  their  slumber  of  two  hundred  years'  duration,  and 
whose  coffin  is  shown  at  Marseilles  in  St.  Victor's 
church. 

Had  the  Spring  been  nearer,  its  waters  might  have 
saved  the  temple  on  the  night  of  Alexander's  birth,  when 
it  was  deliberately  destroyed  by  fire.  To  thwart  the  in- 
cendiary's scheme  to  make  himself  widely  known  by  his 
crime,  an  edict  was  promulgated  fixing  death  as  the 
penalty  for  referring  to  his  name.  There  is  no  record  of 
how  many  suffered  the  penalty,  but  today  even  a  dic- 
tionary description  of  the  temple  is  not  considered  com- 
plete unless  it  includes  the  arsonite's  name. 

The  name  Calippia  was  said  to  mean  The  Beautiful 
Stream  of  Pion,  Pion  being  the  hill  at  the  foot  of  which 
Ephesus  was  located. 

Pliny;  V.  31.     Herodotus:  I.  27. 


334  ASIA  MINOR 

238 
Smyrna 

The  town  that  was  called  "modern  Smyrna"  more 
than  two  thousand  years  ago  was  founded  by  a  Spring 
shaded  with  a  plane  tree,  under  which  Alexander  the 
Great,  some  300  years  B.C.,  lay  down  to  sleep  after  a  tire- 
some day's  hunt  on  Mt.  Pagus. 

There  was  a  temple  of  Nemesis  nearby,  and  the  con- 
queror, as  he  slept,  saw  the  goddesses,  for  there  were  two, 
and  understood  them  to  bid  him  found  a  city  by  the^ 
Spring,  and  people  it  with  the  inhabitants  of  old  Smyrna 
two  and  a  half  miles  distant. 

After  consulting  the  oracle  at  Claros  in  the  matter,  the 
citizens  of  the  old  town  moved  to  the  new  site,  which  was 
in  effect  the  third,  as  Ephesus  was  at  first  called  Smyrna, 
after  an  Amazon  of  that  name ;  and  it  was  a  party  from 
Ephesus,  doubtless  those  whom  Androclus  drove  out  who, 
leaving  it,  started  the  second,  the  old,  Smyrna;  which 
they  did  by  occupying  a  place  in  which  some  Leleges, 
whom  they  expelled,  had  been  living. 

This  easy  method  of  avoiding  the  preliminary  drud- 
geries of  town-making  was  perhaps  adopted  in  more  cases 
than  are  mentioned  by  many  so-called  founders  of  cities; 
it  was  the  favorite  plan  of  Lysimachus  to  whom  Alexan- 
der's death  left  the  carrying  out  of  the  dream  iijunction 
about  Smyrna. 

The  modern  town  was  two  and  a  half  miles  from  the  old 
one  and  came  to  be  noted  for  its  beauty.  It  lay  for  the 
most  part  in  a  plain,  and  the  streets,  running  symmetri- 
cally at  right  angles,  were  lined  with  two-story  houses 
and  porticos,  and  a  lack  of  covered  drains  was  said  to  be 
its  only  defect. 

It  was  near  enough  to  the  site  of  the  old  town  to  retain 


LYDIA  335 

plausibly  the  traditions  about  Homer  and  his  birthplace, 
and  it  contained  his  statue  and  a  temple  to  him,  besides 
having  a  metal  money  named  after  him,  Homereium,  of 
which  specimens  are  still  in  existence. 

But  the  old  town  with  the  actual  atmosphere  of  Homer 
about  it  doubtless  long  remained  a  literary  shrine  as 
attractive  as  Shakespeare's  Avon  became  in  later  times. 

The  ancient  place  held  the  Poet's  study,  a  cave  near 
the  Springs  of  the  Meles  River,  in  which  he  was  said  to 
have  composed  the  story  of  Troy,  the  account  of  whose 
siege  now  seems  like  a  prophecy  of  what  happened  a  few 
miles  away  at  Gallipoli  3100  years  after  he  wrote,  the 
16-inch  guns  and  the  aeroplanes  of  which  were  seen  by 
the  Poet's  teeming  brain,  and  portrayed  in  his  less  prosaic 
but  equally  effective  flying  deities,  and  thunderous  noises 
that  shook  the  earth;  and  even  the  stratagem  fore- 
shadowed by  his  wooden  horse,  rises  far  above  the  com- 
monplace horde  of  a  thousand  decrepit  donkeys  that  were 
employed  by  the  moderns  to  attract  the  Turks'  attention 
while  the  Anzacs  made  a  landing  at  another  place. 

The  Spring  produces  a  stream  that  flows  by  the  ruins 
of  the  old  town ;  its  water  is  bright,  sparkling,  wholesome 
and  agreeable,  and  an  inscription  discovered  some  years 
ago  ascribed  to  it  the  additional  merit  of  having  healing 
properties. 

Strabo;  XIV.  I.     §4.     Pausanias;  VII.  $• 


239 

Claros 

The  fountain  in  the  grove  of  Claros  had  its  name  from 
the  tears  shed  by  Manto  a  prophetess,  and  a  daughter  of 
Teiresias. 


336  ASIA  MINOR 

The  grove  was  by  the  town  of  Colophon  some  nine 
miles  north  of  Ephesus  on  the  banks  of  the  Hales,  a  small 
river  noted  particularly  for  the  coldness  of  its  waters.     ;: 

The  town  was  one  of  those  that  claimed  to  have  been 
the  birthplace  of  Homer,  and  the  invincibleness  of  its 
cavalry  has  made  it  an  every-day  word  by  giving  name  to 
the  flourish  with  which  some  signatures  are  finished,  as 
the  cavalry  was  believed  always  to  finish  every  battle  in 
which  it  was  engaged — or,  as  the  phrase  was,  "to  put  the 
colophon  to  it." 

After  the  capture  of  Thebes  and  the  death  of  her  father 
at  the  Spring  of  Tilphusa,  Manto  was  told  by  the  Delphic 
oracle  to  marry  the  first  man  she  met  on  leaving  the 
temple. 

It  would  undoubtedly  be  most  interesting  to  know  how 
she  set  about  obeying  such  an  unusual  order  without 
overstepping  the  ladylike  limits  of  courtship;  but,  un- 
fortunately nothing  is  recorded  beyond  the  fact  that  she 
married  Rhacias  and  went  with  him  to  Colophon,  in  the 
neighborhood  of  which  place  she  was  suddenly  moved  by 
a  recollection  of  her  recent  griefs,  and  from  her  copious 
weeping  on  that  occasion  the  Spring  took  name. 

The  bride  and  groom  there  founded  a  temple  to  Apollo 
in  which  Manto  delivered  oracles,  and,  later,  her  son 
Mopsus  became  the  seer  of  this  temple  to  which  Calchas 
paid  a  visit  on  his  long  walk  back  from  the  siege  of  Troy. 
In  the  course  of  that  call,  the  visitor  desired  Mopsus  to 
tell  him  how  many  figs  there  were  on  a  nearby  tree ;  and 
Mopsus  in  addition  to  giving  the  number,  which  was 
10,001,  added  how  much  they  weighed;  and  the  number 
and  the  weight  were  both  found  to  be  exactly  as  predicted. 

Then  Calchas  was  asked  to  forecast  the  number  and 
the  sex  in  the  litter  that  the  temple  sow  was  about  to 
have.    A  short  time  later,  the  answering  prediction  of 


LYDIA  337 

Calchas  was  seen  to  be  wrong,  and  he  killed  himself  in 
vexation. 

The  subsequent  seers  at  Claros  were  apparently  no  less 
gifted  than  those  of  the  family  of  the  founders.  All  they 
required  to  know,  from  such  as  came  to  consult  them,  was 
the  number  in  the  party,  and  their  names;  then,  after 
taking  a  draught  of  the  water  of  the  sacred  fountain,  the 
priest  gave  his  inspired  answer  in  verse. 

The  prophetic  effects  of  the  waters  of  the  fountain  con- 
tinued down  to  the  Christian  Era,  but  at  that  time  the 
lives  of  those  who  drank  them  were  said  to  be  shortened. 

Manto's  family  is  imperishably  connected  with  the 
fame  of  the  ancient  world's  two  greatest  poets.  One  of 
her  sons  founded  the  town  of  Mantua  which,  with  filial 
fondness,  he  named  after  his  mother;  and  it  was  at  or 
near  this  town  that  Virgil  was  born  on  the  15th  of  Octo- 
ber in  the  year  70  b.c. 

Homer,  it  would  seem,  owed  even  more  to  the  Manto 
family,  as  it  is  hinted  that  some  of  his  fame  is  due  to  ideas 
or  inspiration  that  he  drew  from  the  verses  composed  by 
a  seeress,  a  sister  of  Manto,  who  also  delivered  her  pro- 
phetic answers  in  metrical  form. 

The  Spring  of  Claros,  has  been  located  at  a  place  now 
called  Zille,  where  there  is  a  fountain  of  water  with  marble 
steps  leading  down  to  the  surface  that  perhaps  reflected 
the  fruit  on  the  fig  tree  when  the  reputation  of  Mopsus 
was  at  stake. 

Strabo;  XIV.  i.    §  27.     Pliny;  II.  106. 


240 

Pactolus 

The  fable  regarding  this  Spring  does  not  describe  its 
origin    seemingly  both  the  fountain  and  its  river  came 


338  ASIA  MINOR 

into  existence  in  no  unnatural  way,  and  were  not  endowed 
with  any  remarkable  characteristics,  nor  greatly  coveted 
for  their  precious  sands,  until  the  time  of  Midas,  the 
Phrygian  king. 

He,  having  rescued  Bacchus's  friend,  the  drunken 
Silenus,  from  some  rustics  who  were  making  sport  of  his 
condition  and  baiting  him,  as  unrefined  modern  children 
sometimes  treat  a  disreputable,  but  inoffensive  inebriate, 
the  god  offered  him,  in  return,  his  choice  of  any  favor 
that  he  might  desire. 

He  accordingly  wished  that  everything  he  might 
touch  should  turn  to  gold,  and  he  became  supremely 
happy  until  the  following  mealtime  arrived,  when  what- 
ever he  conveyed  to  his  mouth,  in  those  forkless  days, 
became  a  chunk  of  unchewable  gold. 

Astonished  at  what  he  called  the  novelty  of  his  mis- 
fortune, being  both  rich  and  wretched,  he  besought 
Bacchus  for  deliverance  from  this  gilded  calamity,  and 
was  told;  "That  thou  may'st  not  remain  overlaid  with 
the  gold  so  unhappily  desired,  go  to  the  river  adjoining 
to  great  Sardis,  and  trace  thy  way,  meeting  the  waters 
as  they  fall  from  the  height  of  the  mountain,  until  thou 
comest  to  the  rise  of  the  stream,  and  plunge  thy  head 
beneath  the  bubbling  Spring,  and  at  once  purge  thy  body 
and  thy  crime." 

Without  cavilling  at  the  apparent  simplicity  of  the 
specific,  Midas  at  once  took  the  prescribed  journey  and 
placed  himself  beneath  the  waters ;  whereupon  the  golden 
virtue  tinged  the  river  and  departed  from  the  human 
body  into  the  stream,  and  the  fields  still  received 
some  of  the  ore  of  this  ancient  vein  of  gold  in  Ovid's 
time. 

Pactolus  was  the  ancient  name  of  a  small  brook  of 
Lydia,  rising  on  Mt.  Tmolus,  now  Bozdaz,  and  emptying 


LYDIA  339 

into  the  Hermus.  It  is  never  more  than  ten  feet  broad 
and  one  foot  deep. 

The  gold  dust  it  contained  is  supposed  to  have  been 
carried  down  from  the  mountain;  and  the  collection  of 
these  particles,  according  to  legend,  was  the  source  of 
the  wealth  of  Croesus,  through  whose  city  of  Sardis  the 
brook  flowed,  traversing  its  market  place. 

This  brook  is  now  called  Sarabat,  and  carries  along  in 
its  current  a  quantity  of  reddish  mud,  but  it  yields  no 
more  gold  dust,  and,  indeed,  had  ceased  to  do  so  even  in 
the  time  of  Strabo,  who  lived  in  the  first  century  B.C. 

Some  of  the  incidents  in  the  career  of  Midas  suggest  a 
common  origin  with  the  history  of  Job,  but  his  life  subse- 
quent to  his  admission  of  wrong  doing  went  naturally 
from  bad  to  worse. 

At  one  time  he  was  found  near  a  Spring  into  which  some 
one  had  put  wine  that  made  him  drunk. 

At  another  time,  Midas,  when  acting  as  referee  in  a 
musical  contest  between  Apollo  and  Marsyas,  having 
made  a  decision  that  displeased  Apollo,  the  god  changed 
his  misleading  ears  to  those  of  a  slowly  moving  ass. 

Afterwards  he  was  tormented  with  frightful  dreams; 
perhaps  those  of  avarice;  and  he  died  from  drinking  warm 
bullock's  blood  to  avert  them.  Ants  were  said  to  have 
crept  into  his  cradle  and  put  grains  of  wheat  in  his  mouth. 
All  of  which  incidents  have  been  assumed,  by  some  of 
the  history's  critics,  to  be  but  allegories  of  the  prosaic 
facts  that  Midas  was  lucky,  accumulated  wealth,  became 
a  ruler  of  men  and  lost  his  fortune  through  dissipation 
and  consequent  perversion  of  judgment. 

Midas  was  the  son  of  that  poor  countryman  Gordius, 
who,  becoming  King  of  Phrygia,  dedicated  his  wagon  to 
Jupiter  and  tied  it  to  the  temple  with  a  rope  of  bark  fas- 
tened with  such  an  intricate  knot  that  no  one  could  untie 


340  ASIA  MINOR 

it,  until  Alexander  the  Great,  being  told  that  whoever 
undid  the  knot  should  reign  over  the  whole  East,  severed 
it  with  his  sword. 

Ovid;  Meta.  XI.     Fable  a. 


241 

Clazomen^ 

There  were  hot  Springs  by  a  temple  of  Apollo,  east  of 

Clazomenae  which  fronted  the  sea  and  eight  small  islands. 

To  the  west  of  the  town,  at  Erythrse,  there  was  a 
Temple  of  Hercules  which  contained  a  work  of  art  of 
perfect  Egyptian  design;  it  was  a  wooden  raft  on  which 
the  god  sailed  from  Tyre.  The  people  found  it  on  the 
coast  and,  being  anxious  to  secure  such  a  precious 
memento,  made  every  effort  to  get  it  on  shore,  but  with- 
out success  until  Phormio,  a  blind  fisherman,  saw  in  a 
dream  that  it  could  be  drawn  to  land  with  a  rope  made 
of  women's  hair. 

The  free-born  belles  of  Erythrse  refused  to  part  with 
their  tresses,  but  the  female  slaves  were  able  to  furnish 
enough  material  for  the  purpose,  and  the  raft  was  drawn 
ashore  without  further  difficulty  and  afterwards  placed 
in  the  temple,  which  none  of  the  women  who  had  refused 
to  contribute  their  hair  were  permitted  to  enter. 

The  rope  was  preserved  with  the  raft,  and  Phormio 
recovered  his  sight  which  he  retained  to  the  end  of  his  life. 

The  hot  Springs,  which  register  150  degrees  Fahrenheit, 
have  been  found  near  the  present  Vourla ;  the  ruins  of  the 
temple  of  Hercules  are  also  still  in  evidence,  but  the  raft 
and  the  hair  rope  have  vanished;  and  even  two  of  the 
islands  have  disappeared,  for  of  the  eight  that  are  men- 
tioned in  the  old  descriptions  only  six  can  now  be  found. 

Strabo;  XIV.  I.    §36.     Pausanias;  VII.  5. 


PHRYGIA 

242 
Marsyas 

The  highest  peak  of  a  mountain  range  that  ran  diagon- 
ally across  Phrygia  reached  an  altitude  of  approximately 
two  miles,  and  was  named  Mt.  Olympus ;  hence  perhaps 
the  history  associated  with  the  Spring  of  the  river  Mar- 
syas, which  rose  on  the  western  slope  of  the  range,  al- 
though it  was  nowhere  near  the  Mt.  Olympus  usually 
accepted  as  the  home  of  the  ancient  divinities. 

The  history  is  to  the  effect  that  Minerva,  getting  an 
idea  from  the  hissing  of  the  stiffened  snakes,  when  Perseus 
cut  off  serpent-haired  Medusa's  head,  invented  the  flute, 
in  the  windy  month  of  March,  and,  having  tortured  the 
forests  in  secret  until  she  was  satisfied  with  her  proficiency, 
gave  the  gods  an  exhibition  of  her  skill. 

The  novel  entertainment  was,  however,  received  with 
such  unrestrained  mirth,  because  of  the  ludicrous  spec- 
tacle of  the  performer's  puffed  cheeks,  that  the  irritated 
goddess  rushed  away  from  the  unsympathetic  audience 
and  sought  a  fountain  to  see  for  herself  how  she  looked ; 
and  she  was  so  provoked  with  her  reflection  in  the  mirror 
of  the  Spring  that  she  flung  the  flute  into  the  waters  and 
foreswore  its  use  for  evermore. 

The  satyr  Marsyas,  finding  the  discarded  instrument 
in  the  fountain,  accidentally  discovered  its  possibilities, 
and  then  practised  diligently,  and  without  any  regard  to 
the  effect  upon  his  facial  appearance,  to  perfect  himself  in 

341 


342  AS?A  MINOR 

its  use.  As  soon  as  he  was  satisfied  with  the  perfection 
of  his  performance,  he  challenged  Apollo  to  a  competi- 
tion, flute  against  lyre,  with  Midas  as  judge. 

Apollo,  apparently  not  very  sure  of  his  musical  supe- 
riority, resorted  to  a  trick  to  increase  his  chances  of  success 
and  played  upon  his  lyre  held  upside  down,  an  unusual 
and,  at  first  sight,  astonishing  position,  but  one  which 
in  no  wise  changed  the  order  of  the  strings. 

When  Apollo  had  finished  his  part  he  then  insisted  that 
Marsyas  should  compete  under  the  same  conditions,  and 
should  play  with  his  flute  similarly  reversed.  Under  the 
circumstances,  Marsyas*  performance  was  no  doubt  little 
better  than  Paderewski's  would  be  if  he  were  compelled 
to  play  on  a  piano  set  upside  down. 

The  entire  performance  was  a  farce  and  absolutely 
disreputable;  it  is  even  said  that  Apollo,  who  sang  while 
playing  the  lyre,  preposterously  contended  that  Marsyas 
ought  to  sing  while  he  was  fluting,  and  Midas  very  justly 
decided  against  Apollo;  but  the  god,  instead  of  grace- 
fully accepting  the  judgment,  malignantly  changed 
Midas'  ears  to  such  as  an  ass  has;  and  then  fiendishly 
flayed  Marsyas  alive  after  suspending  him  to  a  remark- 
ably tall  plane  tree,  which  Pliny  records  was  in  his  time 
still  pointed  out  to  travelers. 

An  apologist  for  Apollo  has  claimed  that  he  merely 
scourged  Marsyas;  but  the  murdered  musician's  skin, 
which  was  preserved  at  Celaenae  near  the  junction  of  the 
two  rivers,  was  ample  proof  of  the  god's  more  atrocious 
act;  and  to  that  proof  was  added  the  testimony  of  the 
Spring  of  the  Marsyas  River  itself  which  was  formed  by 
the  tears  that  the  rural  divinities  shed  on  seeing  Marsyas' 
murder. 

The  tears  of  the  rural  divinities,  the  fauns  and  nymphs 
and  satyrs,  were  agumented  by  the  weeping  of  all  the 

iff. 


PHRYGIA  343 

countryside,  for  even  the  hardy  herdsmen  and  the  shep- 
herds cried  as  copiously  as  the  others,  and  the  fountain 
was  formed  from  what  the  over-moistened  earth  could 
not  absorb. 

The  flutes,  for  they  were  double  pipes,  floated  down 
the  Marsyas  River  and  into  the  Maeander,  and  were  finally 
rescued  at  Sicyon  and  preserved  for  a  long  time  after- 
wards in  the  town's  temple,  the  custodians  of  which  were 
glad  to  relate  all  the  details  of  the  occurrence  to  any 
visitor  who  showed  a  proper  appreciation  of  what  is  due 
to  well-informed  and  talkative  temple  attendants. 

The  Spring  of  Catarractes,  which  is  described  as  rising 
in  the  very  forum  of  Celasnae  and  flowing  into  the  Maean- 
der River,  is  taken  to  be  the  Spring  of  Marsyas  under 
another  name. 

Xenophon  adds  the  information  that  the  Spring  of 
Marsyas  rose  in  a  cave  wherein  Apollo  hung  his  victim's 
skin. 

Modern  visitors  report  that  the  Spring  is  at  a  place  now 
called  Denair,  and  that  it  gushes  out  with  great  rapidity 
at  the  base  of  a  stony  cliff  surrounded  with  broken  rocks 
that  probably  once  formed  the  roof  of  the  classic  cavern. 

Ovid;  VI.    Fable  4.     Herodotus;  VII.  26. 


Rhyndacus 

The  source  of  the  Rhyndacus  River  was  in  Lake  Arty n- 
ias  near  Miletopolis.  The  stream  was  formerly  called 
Lycus,  and,  in  a  part  of  its  course,  Megistus. 

It  formed  the  boundary  line  between  Mysia  and  Bithy- 
nia,  and  it  flowed  into  the  Propontis  with  much  dignity, 
brushing  the  sea  aside  and  keeping  to  itself  for  a  great 


344  ASIA  MINOR 

distance  after  entering,  as  was  shown  by  the  well-defined 
path  made  by  its  yellow  waters. 

It  is  now  called  the  Lupad,  and  its  source  is  placed  at 
the  foot  of  Mt.  Olympus  in  what  may  have  been  Phrygia 
Epictetus. 

Pliny;  V.  40. 


244-245 

Cl^on.    Gelon 

Not  far  from  the  Spring  of  Marsyas,  there  were  two 
other  Springs  called  Claeon  and  Gelon,  from  the  effects 
that  they  respectively  produced — the  names  meaning, 
the  one,  to  weep;  and  the  other,  to  laugh. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  16. 


246 
The  Pipe  Fountain 

Aulocrene,  the  Pipe  or  Flute  Fountain,  was  on  the  crest 
of  a  hill  called  Celaenae  near  a  city  of  the  same  name. 

It  was  the  source  of  the  River  Masander  where  at  the 
base  of  a  rocky  cliff  its  overflow  gushed  out  in  a  consider- 
able stream  that  formed  a  rapid  brook. 

Cyrus  built  a  palace  over  the  Spring,  and  made  a 
hunting  park,  filled  with  wild  animals,  along  the  borders 
of  the  stream. 

The  waters  of  the  Spring  produced  a  reed  that  was 
especially  suitable  for  making  flutes,  and  it  was  from 
one  of  its  reeds  that  Minerva  fashioned  the  first  pipe 
ever  made;  the  one  she  threw  away  and  that  Marsyas 
found  and  used  in  his  melancholy-ending  contest  with 
Apollo. 


PHRYGIA  345 

The  stream  is  better  known  from  the  use  of  its  name  as 
a  synonym  for  crookedness,  as  it  was  beheved  to  be  the 
most  rambHng  river  in  the  world  until  the  Humboldt 
River  of  Central  Nevada  in  the  United  States  was  dis- 
covered; the  convolutions  of  this  revolving  river  in 
Nevada  are  said  to  make  some  of  the  wild  water  fowl  giddy 
when  trying  to  follow  its  course;  it  travels  8  miles  to 
progress  a  distance  that  a  straight-away  stream  would 
cover  in  23^  miles.  It  runs  north  twenty-five  times; 
east,  eighteen;  south,  thirty;  and  west,  forty-one. 

At  33  points  it  runs  parallel  to  itself,  the  two  currents 
less  than  150  feet  apart,  and  the  streams  flowing  in  oppo- 
site directions  as  if  the  river  were  doubling  on  its  tracks 
to  elude  pursuit.  Finally  it  runs  into  the  desert  where  it 
makes  good  its  escape  by  sinking  out  of  sight. 

In  its  turnings  and  twistings  the  Masander  frequently 
sliced  off  large  portions  of  its  banks  and  floated  them  to 
some  other  part  of  its  course;  and  many  actions  were 
brought  against  it  for  thus  robbing  people  of  their  land 
and  transferring  it  elsewhere. 

The  fines  that  were  imposed  on  the  river  in  these  cases 
were  collected  ingeniously  and  without  difficulty.  As  the 
stream  was  a  very  deep  one,  at  many  places  as  deep  as  it 
was  broad,  it  could  not  be  crossed  except  at  the  ferries; 
and  whenever  the  river  was  mulcted  for  some  new 
robbery  the  passengers'  tolls  were  increased  until  the 
amount  of  the  judgment  was  satisfied. 

The  present  source  of  the  Maeander  has  been  reported 
to  be  what  is  called  a  lake  which  is  a  half  mile  or  more 
across,  and  near  Denair.  Growing  in  this  body  of  water 
are  many  reeds  which  may  justify  calling  it  the  Pipe 
fountain  of  Minerva's  period. 

Xenophon;  Anabasis;  I.  2.    §7. 
Strabo;  XII.  8.     §  is  and  §19. 


346  ASIA  MINOR 

247 
Lycus 

Many  precipitous  rivers  were  named  Lycus,  supposedly 
because  their  rapid  currents  suggested  the  rushing  of  a 
wolf  in  the  pursuit  of  its  prey. 

This  Lycus,  of  Phrygia,  rose  in  the  eastern  part  of  Mt. 
Cadmus  but  disappeared  in  a  chasm  near  Colossae.  It 
sprang  out  again,  a  half  mile  away,  loaded  with  calcareous 
matter  that  formed  a  coating  of  stone  wherever  it  was 
deposited;  and  the  water  of  the  stream,  dashing  against 
the  rocks  among  which  it  rushed,  was  shred  into  spray 
and  flung  to  the  height  of  its  banks,  painting  them  over 
with  coat  upon  coat  that  solidified  and  gained  in  thick- 
ness until  eventually  the  stone  walls,  growing  out  on  each 
side,  met  and  formed  arches  or  natural  bridges  of  traver- 
tine over  the  river,  a  passage  below  being  kept  open  by 
the  force  of  the  current. 

The  chasm  where  the  stream  first  disappeared  has  been 
found  in  the  ruins  of  Chonae  which  took  the  place  of 
Colossae,  a  city  widely  known  to  the  ancients  through  the 
valuable  fleeces  of  its  raven  black  sheep,  and  to  later  day 
Christians  through  St.  Paul's  Epistles  to  its  inhabitants. 
Laodiceia,  of  The  Revelation,  was  also  practically  on  the 
banks  of  the  Lycus,  which  reached  the  sea  through  the 
Mseander  River. 

The  Lycus  is  now  called  the  Tchoruk-Su. 

Herodotus;  VII.  30.  Ovid;  Meta.  XV.  line  27a. 

248 

The  Well  of  Midas 

Ancyra,  in  the  peak  of  the  northwest  corner  of  Phry- 
gia, was  a  town  built  by  Midas  the  son  of  that  Gordius 
whose  fame  was  tied  up  in  a  knot. 


PHRYGIA  347 

The  city  had  a  temple  of  Zeus  in  which  was  kept  the 
anchor  that  Midas  found,  the  anchor  that  gave  name  to 
the  city  and  that  was  reproduced  on  many  of  its  coins. 
The  people  showed  a  Well  called  the  Well  of  Midas 
because,  they  said,  he  poured  wine  into  it  that  he  might 
capture  Silenus. 

If  that  incident  resulted  in  Midas'  pouring  gold  in- 
stead of  wine  into  another  Spring  {vide  Pactolus),  it 
may  throw  a  new  light  on  the  feature  in  the  history  of 
Midas  that  made  him  even  more  famous  than  his  farmer 
father.  If  Midas  made  Silenus  drunk  for  the  purpose  of 
getting  credit  for  rescuing  him,  then  Bacchus'  pretended 
reward  for  a  kindness  to  his  friend  may  have  been  really 
a  spoofingly  administered  punishment  for  what  Bacchus 
well  understood  was  a  trick  on  the  part  of  Midas,  who 
seems  to  have  been  a  favorite  victim  for  practical  jokers. 
He  himself  is  said  to  have  been  made  drunk  by  someone 
who  poured  wine  into  a  Spring  from  which  he  drank ;  and 
Bacchus  gave  him  the  power  of  transmutation  in  such  a 
way  that  Midas  was  only  too  glad  to  get  rid  of  it  even 
though  the  process  required  his  taking  a  long  journey ;  and 
Apollo  made  him  ridiculous  by  giving  him  a  pair  of  long, 
flapping  ass'  ears. 

The  Spring  at  which  Midas  himself  was  made  drunk 
may  have  been  that  wayside  fount  in  the  forest  of  Thym- 
brium,  150  miles  from  Ancyra,  which  was  pointed  out  to 
Cyrus  as  the  fountain  of  Midas. 

Xenophon;  Anabasis.  I.  2.     §  13. 
Pausanias;  I.  4. 

249 

Themisonium 

A  cavern  thirty  stadia  from  Themisonium  in  the 
southern  part  of  Phrygia  was  ranked  as  the  third  most 


348  ASIA  MINOR 

wonderful  cave  in  the  world  of  the  ancients,  the  first  and 
second  being  the  Corycian  Cavern  and  the  Cave  of 
Steunos,  and  the  fourth  The  Cave  of  Hylae. 

The  existence  of  the  Themisonium  cavern  was  re- 
vealed to  the  leaders  of  the  town  in  a  dream  which, 
also,  gave  them  directions  to  hide  the  townspeople  in 
it  when  a  raiding  party  of  the  Galati  was  approaching 
the  town. 

As  there  was  no  direct  road  to  it,  and  as  it  contained 
Springs  of  water,  it  made  a  safe  refuge  for  the  threatened 
inhabitants  until  the  invaders  had  departed.  But  they 
must  have  suffered  considerable  discomfort  during  the 
time  they  had  to  hide,  for,  from  the  descriptions  of  the 
cave,  the  most  remarkable  things  about  it  seem  to  have 
been  a  very  low  roof  that  almost  touched  the  floor,  and 
an  absolute  absence  of  any  sunlight. 

The  cave  at  Hylas  was  remarkable  for  its  statue  of 
Apollo  which  had  the  power  of  inuring  men  to  injury, 
and  could  give  them  supernatural  strength.  Such  as 
received  the  power  could  leap  down  precipices  without 
suffering  any  hurt,  and  could  tear  up  huge  trees  by  the 
roots  and  carry  them  easily  and  unchecked  through 
winding  mountain  passes. 

Today  the  most  remarkable  thing  about  these  caves 
is  that  they  should  have  been  remarked ;  for  there  were 
really  awe-inspiring  caverns  nearly  under  the  feet  of  the 
describers  when  they  traveled  through  the  country  north 
of  Epirus.  Their  existence  was  of  course  unsuspected  by 
many,  but  it  is  not  impossible  that  someone  had  glimpsed 
them,  and  found  in  their  sights  inspiration  the  source  of 
which  his  hearers  could  never  have  surmised. 

It  was  thought  by  ancient  commentators  that  Homer 
deflected  the  rivers  Acheron  and  Cocytus,  in  Epirus,  to 
the  subterranean  tract  where  he  located  Hades  and  Ely- 


PHRYGIA  349 

sium,  and  the  idea  has  been  tacitly  accepted  ever  since 
it  was  first  expressed. 

Within  recent  years,  however,  explorations  by  inquisi- 
tive Italians  have  disclosed  what,  if  Homer  (as  he  may 
have)  had  an  inkling  of,  would  turn  the  case  the  other 
way  around  and  show  that  he  took  the  easier  task  of 
founding  his  Hades  near  where  those  rivers  were  already 
running ;  for  it  is  now  known  that  within  a  few  hundred 
miles  of  the  source  of  the  Acheron  there  are  caverns  in 
the  earth  many  times  more  deep  and  extensive  than  the 
lowest  dives  of  ancient  fancies  ever  described  or  fathomed ; 
those  fictions  now  seem  commonplace  in  contrast  with 
the  facts  that  lay  before  their  fathers,  unknown  and  un- 
imagined  by  many  of  them — such  as  chambers  with 
colossal  ceilings,  and  winding  galleries,  scores  of  miles  in 
length,  through  many  of  which  great  rivers  flow  in  inky 
darkness,  plunging  from  time  to  time  in  cataracts  of  dizzy 
height  to  lower  and  lower  depths  to  reach  their  outlets 
near  the  bases  of  plateaux  covering  thousands  of  square 
miles,  like  the  Carso  table-land  through  which  the 
Timavo  river  ran  its  winding,  unseen  course. 

Ruins  found  at  Kai  Hissar  are  thought  to  be  those  of 
Themisonium. 

Pausanias;  X.  32. 


250 

Caruru  Boiling  Springs 

The  Springs  of  Caruru  gave  forth  boiling  water ;  some  of 
them  rose  in  the  River  Mseander,  and  others  on  its  banks. 

Caruru  was  a  village  on  the  dividing  line  between  Phry- 
gia  and  Caria,  and  a  slab  was  set  up  by  King  Croesus 
directing  to  the  fact  the  attention  of  travelers,  of  whom 


350  ASIA  MINOR 

there  were  great  numbers  that  passed  through  or  stopped 
overnight  at  the  place,  giving  employment  to  numerous 
innkeepers;  for  the  village  was  on  the  highway  running 
along  the  valley  of  the  Meeander  from  Laodiceia  to  Ephe- 
sus,  over  which  all  of  the  products  of  the  interior  were  tak- 
en down  to  the  seacoast  for  shipment  to  foreign  markets. 

The  village  on  the  busy  highway  has  disappeared,  and 
from  very  old  accounts  of  the  conditions  of  the  country 
at  that  time,  little  effort  is  required  to  imagine  what 
became  of  it.  The  district  was  subject  to  earthquakes, 
each  shock  of  which  seems  to  be  assumed  as  definitive  by 
people  in  all  parts  of  the  earth  where  they  occur,  so  that 
from  Caruru  to  San  Francisco  the  ground  has  hardly 
ceased  to  tremble  before  the  inhabitants  are  busy  at 
raising  new  walls  and  replacing  the  crockery. 

In  Caruru,  during  the  earthquakes,  cracks  and  chasms 
were  wont  to  appear  and  engulf  whatever  lay  in  their 
path;  sometimes  in  the  night  an  inn  with  all  its  patrons 
would  drop  out  of  sight  before  the  lodgers  could  even 
jump  out  of  bed. 

So  much  of  the  place  has  thus  disappeared  that  the 
Springs  themselves  are  now  the  only  guides  to  its  old 
location,  and  a  spot  12  miles  northwest  of  Denizli,  where 
some  hot  Springs  are  seen  leaping  out  of  the  ground  as  if 
trying  to  escape  from  the  heat  below,  is  supposed  to  have 
been  the  location  occupied  by  the  Caruru  of  ancient  days. 

Strabo;  XII.  8.     5  17- 


251 
HiERAPOLIS 

The  very  singular  properties  of  the  Hot  Springs  and 
the  Plutonium  at  Hierapolis  aroused  the  wonder  of  the 


PHRYGIA  351 

ancients;  and  some  of  the  effects  the  waters  produced 
have  appeared  equally  surprising  to  modern  travelers. 

The  water  of  the  Springs  consolidated  so  readily  that  it 
became  stone  even  in  the  act  of  flowing,  and  made  dams 
of  solid  rock  in  its  channels. 

Under  a  small  brow  of  the  overhanging  mountain  there 
was  a  pit  of  considerable  depth  that  had  at  the  top  an 
opening  only  large  enough  to  admit  the  body  of  a  man. 
A  four-sided  railing  surrounded  this  pit,  which  was  the 
Plutonium,  and  from  which  issued  a  dark  and  cloudy 
vapor  so  dense  that  the  bottom  could  barely  be  observed 
through  the  veil  it  formed.  Birds  and  animals,  even 
powerful  bulls,  if  taken  inside  of  the  railing  fell  lifeless 
instantly  when  they  breathed  the  noxious  fumes  that 
came  from  this  Charon's  sewer,  as  it  was  called. 

There  was  also  a  Plutonium,  with  a  cave  called  The 
Charonium  at  Acharaca  in  Lydia. 

The  Galli,  the  attendant  eunuchs,  the  priests  of  the 
Mother  of  the  Gods,  who  were  in  charge  of  the  Plutonium, 
seemed,  however,  to  be  immune  from  the  gases  and  were 
able  even  to  descend  into  the  pit  unharmed ;  a  fact  that 
led  to  current  conjecture  and  discussion  as  to  whether 
their  immunity  was  due  to  their  physical  difference  from 
other  men,  or  to  the  guarding  care  of  the  divinity,  or 
simply  to  their  holding  their  breath,  or  to  their  possession 
of  some  antidote  against  the  fumes. 

Those  emanations  have  ceased  to  proceed  from  the 
pit;  but  there  is  plenty  of  proof  of  the  consolidating 
tendencies  of  the  waters  of  the  Hot  Springs  which,  as 
recent  explorers  assert,  have  left  cascades  of  stone  as 
though  the  waters  had  been  suddenly  frozen  in  their 
headlong  rush,  or  instantly  fixed  as  solid,  wavy  rocks  that 
seem  to  be  nature-like  waterfalls  molded  in  stone. 

Hierapolis  was  the  birthplace  of  Epictetus;  it  lay  be- 


352  ASIA  MINOR 

tween  the  Maeander  and  the  Lycus  rivers,  some  five  miles 
north  of  Laodiceia  whose  people's  welfare  was  the  object 
of  St.  Paul's  "special  conflict." 

Strabo;  XIII.  4.    §  M-     Pliny  II.  95. 


252 

Gallus 

The  Spring  of  the  Gallus  River  was  at  Modra  in  Phrygia 
in  the  district  which  was  called  the  Epictetus  and  was 
formerly  occupied  by  the  Bithynians. 

It  was  either  the  water  of  this  Spring,  or  that  of 
another  small  river  of  the  same  name  in  Phrygia,  that 
caused  madness  in  those  who  drank  of  it  immoderately, 
although  when  taken  in  medicinal  doses  it  was  believed  to 
act  as  a  cure  for  affections  of  the  bladder. 

iThe  Galli,  the  frenzied  priests  of  the  Mother  of  the  Gods, 
were  said  to  have  derived  their  name  from  the  fountain  of 
Gallus )  to  whose  effects  were  attributed  their  self -mutila- 
tions and  their  noisy  ceremonies  with  tambourines  and 
cymbals  and  bowlings. 

As  the  goddess  was  worshiped  in  Phrygia  as  early  as 
1506  B.C.,  it  would  seem  more  consistent  to  connect  the 
name  of  her  priests  with  the  fountain  of  Gallus  than 
with  people  of  Gaul  who  migrated  from  the  Pyrenees  to 
what  became  Galatia,  as  that  migration  did  not  take 
place  until  many  centuries  later.  : 

It  seems  not  unlikely,  too,  that  the  Bona  Dea,  who  had  * 
her  Spring  at  Rome  in  the  time  of  Hercules,  came  to  be 
considered  the  same  as  the  Mother  of  the  Gods  for  whom 
the  Romans  sent  to  Phrygia  in  204  B.C.  as  a  charm  to 
drive  Hannibal  out  of  Italy.  On  that  occasion  the  eunuch 
fraternity  of  Galli  generously  gave  the  Romans  a  stone. 


PHRYGIA  353 

which  they  said  was  the  goddess  herself;  and  as  the 
Romans  were  perfectly  satisfied,  and  conveyed  the  stone 
to  Rome  with  devout  solicitude,  one  may  gather  that  the 
deity  was  the  sharpened  stone  with  which  the  Galli 
mutilated  themselves  when  they  had  become  maddened 
with  overdraughts  from  the  fountain  of  Gallus. 

A  town  and  its  Spring,  which  are  now  called  Aine  Geul, 
are  supposed  to  be  the  Modra  of  Strabo,  which,  appar- 
ently, he  mislocated. 

Ovid;  Fasti.  IV.  line  364  and  223. 
Strabo;  XII.  3- §7. 


253-255 
DORYLiEUM.      MeNOSCOME.      LiON's   VILLAGE 

-  •  Athenasus  mentions  the  fountain  of  Dorylaeum  as  being 
very  delicious  to  drink  of.  Dorylasum  is  said  to  be  repre- 
sented by  a  settlement  now  called  Eski-Shehr. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  fountains  of  Menoscome  and 
of  the  Lion's  Village  were  pronounced  rough  and  nitrous 
in  their  taste. 

The  last  two  Springs  have  not  been  identified. 

Athenaeus;  II.  n. 


256 

Sangarius 

The  Spring  of  the  Sangarius  River  was  in  the  village  of 
Sangias  on  Mt.  Adoreus. 

The  river  was  celebrated  for  the  fine  fish  that  were 
taken  in  its  waters,  which  emptied  into  the  Euxine  Sea. 
■  It  formed  the  boundary  between  Phrygia  and  Bithy- 
nia. 

Strabo;  XII.  3.    §  7- 
23 


354  ASIA  MINOR 

257 
The  Arms  of  Briareus 

One  hundred  Springs  flowed  from  a  hill  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Rhyndacus  River  and  they  were  called  The  Anns  of 
Briareus. 

Briareus,  sometimes  designated  ^gaeon,  and  his  two 
brothers  Gyges  and  Cottus  were  the  first  progeny  of  the 
first  god,  Uranus. 

Each  one  of  the  three  had  fifty  heads  and  one  hundred 
arms. 

Almost  immediately  after  birth,  their  father  confined 
them  in  Tartarus,  a  region  as  far  from  the  earth  as  the 
earth  was  from  the  sky.  They  were  released  by  the 
Titans  just  before  Uranus  was  succeeded  by  his  son 
Saturn  called  Cronus  by  the  Greeks,  who,  however,  re- 
imprisoned  them  when  they  had  assisted  him  to  gain  the 
sovereignty  of  the  world;  and  they  were  not  released 
again  until  Zeus  was  about  to  take  the  place  of  Saturn,  as 
sovereign,  the  300  rocks  they  could  hurl  at  one  throw 
making  their  services  of  great  value  in  the  different  celes- 
tial revolutions. 

In  an  early  dispute  between  Neptune  and  Apollo  re- 
garding the  ownership  of  the  isthmus  of  Corinth,  Briareus 
was  appointed  arbitrator,  and,  by  giving  a  small  part  of 
the  territory  to  Apollo,  angered  Neptune  who  threw  him 
into  the  sea,  in  which  he  was  unable  to  keep  all  of  his 
heads  above  water. 

Briareus'  body  was  buried  near  the  mouth  of  the  Rhyn- 
dacus under  the  hill  out  of  which  there  then  gushed  the 
hundred  Springs. 

No  corresponding  fountains  have  been  reported  in  the 
near  neighborhood  in  modern  days,  but  it  will  be  recalled 
that  the  source  of  the  Thermodon  in  Pontus  produced 


PHRYGIA  355 

ninety-six  rivers,  and  that  Hercules  encountered  a  num- 
ber of  six-armed  men  near  the  Rhyndacus  River. 

E.  Clavier's  note  on  Apollodorus  I.  i.    {  i. 


258 

The  Fountain  of  Midas 

When  Cyrus  had  reached  Thymbrium,  at  the  outset 
of  his  expedition  to  capture  Babylon,  there  was  pointed 
out  to  him  at  the  side  of  the  road  a  Spring  called  the 
fountain  of  Midas,  which  he  was  told  was  the  one  into 
which  King  Midas  poured  wine  in  order  to  capture  the 
satyr  who  drank  of  it — as  to  which  circumstance,  men- 
tion is  made  under  the  fountain  of  Inna.     (No.  202.) 

If  Thymbrium  was  at  what  is  now  the  town  of  Ak 
Shahir,  then  the  king's  fountain  may  be  the  one  at 
present  called  Alu  Bunar  Darbund,  which  is  several  days' 
journey  from  Kara  Bunar,  the  Black  Spring,  which 
locates  the  town  of  Dana  at  which  Cyrus  stayed  three 
days  in  Cappadocia. 

Xenophon;  I.  a.    i  13. 


CAPPADOCIA 

259 

The  Asmab^an  Well 

The  Asmabsean  Well  was  a  mysterious  hot  Spring 
that  rose  in  a  cold  lake  near  Tyana  the  capital  of 
Cappadocia. 

Not  less  strange  was  the  circumstance  that  though  the 
lake  had  no  visible  outlet  the  unvarying  depth  of  the 
water  showed  there  was  no  increase  in  volume. 

The  Spring  was  sacred  to  Zeus,  and  on  the  border  of 
the  lake  a  temple  was  erected  to  that  divinity  in  which 
he  was  worshiped  with  the  surname  of  Asmabaeus,  de- 
rived from  the  Spring. 

The  waters  were  shut  in  by  perpendicular  hills  in  which 
were  cut  steps  that  led  to  the  temple. 

Tyana,  however,  produced  a  human  mystery  more 
widely  known  than  the  phenomenal  fountain ;  a  mystery 
that  traveled  in  person  to  all  parts  of  the  world ;  of  whom 
books  were  written  and  to  whom  altars  and  temples  were 
raised,  and  who  might,  under  different  conditions,  have 
prolonged  the  life  of  paganism.  This  mystery  was  Apol- 
lonius  of  Tyana,  who  was  born  in  the  city  four  years 
before  the  Christian  Era. 

His  mission  was  to  restore  pagan  worship  to  its  primi- 
tive piety,  and  free  it  from  corruption  and  the  effects  of 
its  association  with  the  fables  of  the  poets;  to  abolish 
sacrifices ;  and  to  emancipate  prayer  from  service  of  the 
lips,  for  he  held  that  the  heart's  sincere  desire  was  prayer 

356 


CAPPADOCIA  357 

and  that  it  became  polluted  when  touched  with  the 
tongue  or  passed  through  the  lips. 

But  in  Apollonius'  time  it  was  too  late  to  attempt  to 
cure  the  cancer,  that  had  spread  throughout  the  pagan 
body,  by  lopping  off  a  few  obtruding  particles,  and  the 
more  radical  method  of  the  new  school  of  salvation  was 
adopted,  that  of  complete  excision  and  the  substitution 
of  Christianity. 

Apollonius  was  said  to  be  an  incarnation  of  Proteus, 
and  of  the  bookful  of  prodigies  related  about  him  two  in 
particular  were  of  a  nature  to  confirm  such  a  claim, 
they  both  occurred  in  Rome,  but  at  different  times;  one, 
when  an  indictment,  under  which  he  was  about  to  be 
prosecuted,  was  found  to  have  become  blank,  Apollonius 
having  caused  the  writing  to  vanish ;  and  the  other,  when, 
in  similar  peril,  he  himself  vanished,  appearing  within 
the  same  hour  at  Puteoli  i6o  miles  distant. 

In  the  temple  of  Diana  at  Castabala,  to  the  northeast, 
the  priestesses  walked  barefooted  but  unhurt  over  beds 
of  burning  coals,  a  feat  that  was,  maybe,  more  of  a  marvel 
to  foreigners  than  to  the  natives,  as  the  country  of 
Cappadocia  contained  many  underground  fires  which 
sometimes  burst  through  the  surface  to  the  injury  of 
cattle  and  incautious  strangers ;  and  to  one  of  such  hidden 
furnaces  the  Spring  no  doubt  owed  its  mysterious  heat. 

A  long  search  for  the  ruins  of  Tyana  was  concluded 
when  the  Asmabasan  Well  was  found  two  miles  north  of 
what  is  now  called  Kis  Hissar  where  it  continues  to 
bubble  up,  like  a  boiling  cauldron,  in  a  pool  of  cold  water. 

Philostratus;  Vit.  Apoll.  I.  4. 
Strabo;  XII.  2.    §  7. 


CARIA 

260 
Cnidus 

The  Springs  of  Cnidus,  in  Caria,  were  in  a  grove  which 
surrounded  a  giant  oak  that  towered  above  and  over- 
spread the  other  trees,  as  they  overtopped  and  shadowed 
the  grass  beneath  them. 

The  enclosing  wood  was  so  dense  that  an  arrow  could 
scarcely  have  penetrated  it,  and  within  were  pine  and  elm 
and  pear  and  sweet  apple  trees,  whose  roots  were  nour- 
ished by  the  water  of  these  copious  Springs  that  burst 
from  the  ground  like  as  amber,  and  were  as  dear  to  Ceres 
as  those  of  Eleusis,  Triopas  or  Enna. 

How  very  highly  she  prized  them  and  the  surround- 
ing beauties,  is  shown  by  the  terrible  punishment  she 
inflicted  upon  Erysichthon,  the  great-grandfather  of 
Ulysses,  whose  trials  appear  trifles  in  comparison  with 
the  tortures  his  ancestor  suffered  through  having  at- 
tempted to  violate  the  grove  of  these  Springs. 

Erysichthon  was  a  man  with  large  means  at  his  com- 
mand, and  he  planned  a  mansion  in  keeping  with  his 
ample  wealth  and  his  station. 

For  such  a  structure  no  timber,  he  thought,  could  be 
more  appropriate  than  that  the  trees  of  the  sacred  grove 
could  furnish,  and,  at  the  head  of  a  large  band  of  wood- 
cutters, he  himself  attacked  the  most  magnificent  speci- 
men, the  giant  oak,  the  girth  of  whose  trunk  gave  a  span 
of  nearly  sixty  feet. 

At  the  sound  of  the  axe's  first  blow,  the  indignant 
goddess  voiced  her  protest,  very  gently,  indeed,  and  in 

358 


CARIA  359 

such  manner  as  none  but  a  churl  would  have  disregarded ; 
Erysichthon,  however,  not  only  turned  upon  her,  but 
even  threatened  her  with  his  horrid  axe,  and  bawled,  and 
loudly  boasted  that  he  would  hew  her  trees  and  build  of 
them  a  house,  in  which  he  would  enjoy  himself  and  hold 
many  pleasant  banquets  to  his  heart's  content. 

Wretched  boast!  For  Ceres  too  well  knew  how  to 
make  the  fulfillment  of  his  wicked  wish  the  punishment 
of  his  shamelessness  and  sacrilege.  Meeting  his  menace, 
then,  with  such  majesty  of  anger  that  his  stout,  hearty 
woodcutters  immediately  fled  in  terror  from  the  scene, 
she  pronounced  his  sentence,  which  was  that  he  should 
spend  his  time  in  eating  to  more  than  his  heart's  content, 
but  never  to  his  belly's.  i 

Thereupon  she  sent  to  the  wastes  of  Mt.  Caucasus,  for 
famishing  Hunger,  and  directed  her  to  breathe  into  his 
veins,  and  scatter  through  his  being,  a  constant  and  un- 
quenchable desire  for  food. 

This  done,  his  ravening  became  a  prodigy ;  as  the  ocean 
receives  rivers  from  the  whole  earth  and  is  never  satiated; 
as  the  flame  rages  more  fiercely  the  more  fuel  it  feeds 
upon,  so  Erysichthon  more  famished  grew  the  more  he  fed. 

The  continuous  preparation  of  his  meals  required  a 
relay  of  cooks  to  the  number  of  twenty;  and  his  thirst, 
which  grew  and  kept  pace  with  his  hunger,  necessitated  a 
Bacchanalian  brigade  of  twelve  butlers  rushing  in  endless 
round  from  the  cellar  to  the  table;  while  ten  handmaidens 
were  continually  busied  in  washing  dishes  and  serving  at 
the  groaning  board. 

Such  ceaseless  gormandizing  precluded  any  attendance 
at  public  banquets,  or  even  at  private  parties  of  his 
friends,  and  his  family  reached  the  utmost  limits  of  social 
lying  in  devising  excuses  that  should  conceal  the  actual 
state  of  affairs  from  all  their  acquaintances. 


36o  ASIA  MINOR 

Not  any  of  the  vast  quantities  of  nutriment,  however, 
with  which  he  continuously  gorged  himself  was  assimi- 
lated or  served  to  nourish  his  frame,  and  it  kept  wasting 
away  like  a  wax  doll  in  the  sunshine,  until  his  once 
powerful  body  was  little  more  than  bone  and  fiber. 

Great  as  was  his  wealth  and  the  number  of  his  flocks 
and  herds,  these  eventually  became  exhausted,  and  even 
the  chefs,  tired  out,  refused  to  continue  the  ceaseless 
round  of  roasting  when  it  became  necessary  to  kill  and 
cook  the  mules  and  horses.  These,  in  turn,  however, 
were  devoured,  and  then,  when  nothing  remained  un- 
eaten save  the  family  cat,  and  when  that,  too,  had  been 
dispatched  in  the  ineffectual  fight  to  stay  the  doomed 
man's  craving,  all  the  family's  belongings  were  sold  for 
marketing  money,  and  finally,  when  there  remained 
nothing  of  all  the  property,  and  when  even  his  daughter, 
Metra,  had  been  sold,  he  was  forced  to  sit  at  the  cross- 
roads, begging  for  morsels  and  cast-away  refuse,  while, 
ever  and  anon,  he  gnawed  and  mangled  the  parts  of  his 
person  he  could  reach  with  his  mouth,  and  miserably  fed 
his  own  body  by  diminishing  it. 

Such  was  the  horrible  fate  that  Ceres  apportioned  to 
the  man  who  had  no  respect  for  her  grove  and  the  Springs 
of  Cnidus. 

Cnidus  was  on  the  point  of  the  peninsula  terminating 
in  the  present  Cape  Krio. 

Ovid;  Meta.  VIII.    Fable  7. 


261 

Petrifying  Spring 

At  Cnidus  there  was  a  Spring  of  fresh  water  which 
had  the  property  of  causing  earth  to  petrify  within  the 
space  of  eight  months. 


CARIA  361 

Great  numbers  of  people  were  attracted  to  Cnidus,  not 
to  watch  this  slow-working  Spring  curiosity  but  to  view 
the  statue  of  the  Cnidian  Venus,  the  finest  work  of  Prax- 
iteles. It  was  exhibited  in  a  temple  open  on  all  sides,  and 
was  esteemed  as  the  finest  piece  of  sculpture  ever  pro- 
duced, a  judgment  that  modern  critics  have  had  no  oppor- 
tunity of  reviewing,  as  the  statue  has  not  yet  been 
discovered.  Many  bids  were  made  for  the  work,  but 
nothing  could  induce  the  islanders  to  part  with  it,  not  even 
the  offer  of  King  Nicomedes  to  pay  a  sum  that  would 
have  extinguished  their  municipal  debt. 

Pliny;  XXXV.  47. 


262 
Lab RAND A 

The  sanctuary  of  Zeus  Stratios  at  Labranda  contained 
a  fountain  in  which  there  were  eels  that  eat  from  the 
hand,  and  that  were  adorned  with  earrings  and  golden 
necklaces. 

Two  modern  travelers  believe  the  remains  of  a  temple 
at  lakli  are  those  of  the  sanctuary  that  contained  the  eel 
Spring;  but  others  think  it  has  not  yet  been  found. 

Pliny;  XXXII.  7. 


e63 

Phausia 

At  Phausia  there  was  a  Spring  that  had  a  remarkable 
upheaval  every  nine  years  and  then  discharged  its  accu- 
mulated impurities. 

This  fountain  was  perhaps  in  the  vast  grotto,  men- 
tioned as  at  the  same  place,  in  which  dripping  v/ater 


362  ASIA  MINOR 

hardened  into  columns  that  were  tinted  in  various  colors. 
Phausia  was  a  town  in  Caria  opposite  the  Island  of 
Rhodes. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  30.  and  30. 


264 

Fountain  of  Salmacis 

This  alluring  fountain  was  near  the  city  of  Halicarnas- 
sus.  Its  waters  were  clear  to  the  very  ground  at  the 
bottom.  About  it  there  were  no  fenny  reeds,  no  barren 
sedge,  no  rushes  with  their  sharp  points.  The  water  was 
translucent  and  the  edges  were  enclosed  with  green  turf 
and  ever  verdant  grass. 

So  alluring  were  the  attractions  of  this  fountain  and  its 
surroundings  that  the  naiad  Salmacis  could  rarely  be 
persuaded  to  leave  it  and  join  in  the  amusements  of  other 
nymphs.  She  spent  much  time  bathing  in  her  Spring, 
afterwards  straightening  her  hair  with  a  comb  of  Citorian 
boxwood  and  devising  new  ways  of  doing  it  up,  learning 
from  the  mirror  surface  of  the  Spring  which  effects  were 
to  be  preferred,  and  continually  striving  to  heighten  them. 

At  other  times  she  would  gather  flowers  and  combine 
the  colors  so  as  to  reproduce  the  pleasures  of  a  painting 
or  a  varied  sunset. 

When  not  thus  or  otherwise  engaged,  she  would  repose 
on  scented  leaves  scattered  over  the  soft  grass,  leaning  on 
an  elbow  and  contemplating  her  decorations  in  the 
Spring  with  the  keenest  enjoyment. 

Hither  one  day  came  the  youth  Hermaphroditus  who, 
though  but  fifteen  years  of  age,  had  begun  to  rove  with 
the  desire  to  see  unknown  beauties  of  nature.  Charmed 
with  the  temperature  of  the  Spring's  pleasant  waters,  he 


CARIA  363 

plunged  into  it  and  was  presently  transformed  into  a 
being  possessing  the  attributes  of  both  men  and  women. 

Not  perfectly  pleased  with  the  strange  result,  he 
prayed  that  the  waters  might  affect  all  others  in  the  same 
way,  and,  in  answer  to  his  request,  the  deities  tainted  the 
fountain  with  drugs  of  ambiguous  qualities. 

Various  matter-of-fact  explanations  have  been  ad- 
vanced to  account  for  the  peculiar  effect  thus  attributed 
to  the  waters  of  this  Spring.  One  theory  is  that  the  foun- 
tain was  instnunental  in  civilizing  certain  barbarians 
who  lived  in  the  neighborhood  when  an  Argive  colony 
began  to  establish  itself  there;  these  men  being  obliged 
to  repair  to  the  Spring  for  water  and  meeting  the  Greek 
colonists,  their  intercourse  not  only  had  a  polishing  effect, 
but,  in  the  course  of  time,  corrupted  them  by  the  intro- 
duction of  luxurious  manners ;  hence  the  fountain  had  the 
reputation  of  changing  men  into  women. 

Another  suggestion  is  that  possibly  the  waters  pos- 
sessed some  peculiar  chemical  quality  that  relaxed  or 
softened  and  made  the  drinker  effeminate,  as  waters  are 
occasionally  to  be  found  with  extraordinary  qualities. 

Lylius  Gyraldus  fancied  that  several  disgraceful  ad- 
ventures happened  near  this  fountain,  which  was  enclosed 
with  walls,  that  in  the  course  of  time  gave  it  a  bad  name. 

Ovid  attempts  no  explanation;  he  says  tersely;  it 
enervates  with  its  ineffable  waters  and  softens  the  limbs 
bathed  in  it;  the  cause  is  unknown,  but  the  properties 
of  the  fountain  are  very  well  known. 

As  to  the  remarkable  youth  Hermaphroditus,  Ovid  is, 
however,  pleasantly  enlightening  and  explains  the  origin 
of  his  name,  which  is  a  compound  of  the  name  of  his 
father  and  that  of  his  mother,  both  of  whom  he  strikingly 
resembled,  facially.  He  was  born  on  Mt.  Ida,  and  his 
parents  were  Hermes  and  Aphrodite. 


364  ASIA  MINOR 

There  was  a  widespread  belief  that  Herodotus  was 
born  near  the  Spring  of  Salmacis,  and  not  by  the  fountain 
of  Thuria,  and  the  city  of  HaHcarnassus  might  have  relied 
upon  that  belief  for  a  place  in  men's  memories;  or,  upon 
having  produced  the  first  woman  Admiral,  Artemesia, 
who  gained  historical  praise  for  the  management  of  her 
squadron  in  Xerxes'  fleet.  But  its  fame  was  further 
assured  by  the  city's  possession  of  a  world  wonder,  one 
of  the  seven,  the  mausoleum  that  another  Artemesia  had 
erected,  in  350  B.C.,  as  a  tomb  for  her  brother  and  hus- 
band, Mausolus. 

The  word  still  lives  in  more  than  one  language,  but 
most  of  the  building  was  converted  into  lime  or  used  for 
making  walls  for  other  structures,  and  there  remain  only 
a  few  fragments  of  it,  which  are  now  among  the  treasures 
of  the  British  Museum. 

Unfortunately,  the  tomb  itself,  to  which  explorers 
had  penetrated  too  late  one  evening  to  permit  of  ex- 
amination, was  found  the  next  morning  opened  and 
despoiled  by  pirates;  doubtless  they  secured  a  valua- 
ble collection  of  vases  and  vestments  and  other  pre- 
cious material;  but  there  could  have  been  few  or  no 
remains  of  the  king,  as  Artemesia  is  said  to  have 
mixed  Mausolus'  ashes  in  her  daily  drink,  during  the 
two  years  that  she  survived  him  while  gradually  dying 
of  grief. 

The  city,  built  on  the  Ceraunian  Gulf,  was  the  most 
strongly  fortified  place  in  Caria ;  and  its  strongest  fortress, 
which,  alone,  Alexander  was  unable  to  reduce,  took  its 
name  from  the  Spring  that  flowed,  as  it  does  to-day,  near 
the  temple  of  Aphrodite,  at  the  foot  of  a  rock  that  was 
crowned  by  the  fortress. 

Strabo;  XIV.  2.     §  i6. 
Ovid;  Meta.  IV.    Fable  5. 


CARIA  365 

265 
Byblis 

The  fountain  of  Byblis  was  possibly  not  in  Caria, 
although  she  herself  was  of  that  district.  The  story  of  her 
love  is  one  of  the  saddest  instances  of  perverted  affection; 
she  was  the  daughter  of  Miletus,  the  founder  of  the 
celebrated  city  of  that  name,  and  she  fell  riotously  in 
love  with  Caunus. 

After  waiting  a  long  while,  in  vain,  for  some  overture 
on  the  part  of  the  object  of  her  misplaced  affections,  she 
proposed  to  him  herself,  in  a  lengthy  and  painfully  com- 
posed letter,  which  he  threw  aside  as  soon  as  received; 
she,  however,  persisted  in  her  efforts,  saying  to  herself, 
"He  was  not  born  of  a  tigress,  nor  does  he  carry  in 
his  breast  hard  flints,  or  solid  iron,  or  adamant;  nor 
yet  did  he  suck  the  milk  of  a  lioness — he  will  yet 
be  won." 

Her  persistence,  however,  far  from  awakening  any 
return,  at  last  drove  Caunus  from  the  country. 

Then  Byblis,  becoming  frantic,  wandered  wailing  over 
the  wild  fields  in  search  of  him. 

"At  length  she  falls  down,  and  laying  her  tresses  upon 
the  hard  ground,  she  presses  the  damp  leaves  with  her 
face,  tearing  the  herbs  with  her  fingers,  and  watering  the 
grass  with  the  stream  of  her  tears. 

"They  say  that  the  Naiads  placed  a  channel  beneath 
these  tears  that  could  never  become  dry,  and  immediately, 
as  drops  from  the  cut  bark  of  the  peach  tree,  or  as  the 
viscid  bitumen  distills  from  the  impregnated  earth,  or  as 
water,  that  has  frozen,  at  the  approach  of  gently  blowing 
Favonius,  the  Zephyr  of  Spring,  melts  away  in  the  sun, 
so  is  Byblis  the  descendant  of  Phoebus,  dissolving  in  her 
tears,  changed  into  a  fountain  which  even  now  in  those 


366  ASIA  MINOR 

valleys  bears  the  name  of  its  mistress  and  flows  beneath 
a  gloomy  oak." 

Pausanias,  critical  again,  as  he  was  with  the  legend  of 
Narcissus,  says  that,  as  Byblis  often  went  to  weep  by  a 
fountain  which  was  outside  of  the  town,  those  who  related 
the  adventure  magnified  it  by  stating  she  was  changed 
into  the  fountain  which  after  her  death  bore  her  name. 
It  may  be  noted,  as  a  possible  case  of  heredity,  that  the 
nymph  Cyane  (the  name  borne  by  Byblis'  mother)  who 
dissolved  into  a  fountain  in  Sicily,  may  be  supposed  from 
Homer's  statement  to  have  come  from  Caria. 

The  end  of  Byblis  was  the  subject  of  one  of  Aristides' 
paintings  called  "The  Anapauomene." 

Owing  to  the  distracted  girl's  wild  wanderings  in  search 
of  her  twin  brother,  there  is  small  chance  of  locating  the 
indefinite  valley  in  which  the  fountain  of  Byblis  was 
formed. 

Ovid;  Meta.  IX.     Fable  5. 


266 

Spring  of  the  Branchid^ 

The  Branchidae  were  a  body  of  priests  in  charge  of  the 
oracle  of  the  temple  of  Didyma,  which  stood  on  a  rocky 
elevation  above  the  harbor  of  Panormus,  2  3^  miles  from 
the  sea,  and  about  22  miles  from  the  city  of  Miletus. 

The  oracle  was  established  in  very  ancient  times  by 
Branchus,  whose  great  beauty  as  a  youth  attracted  the 
attention  of  Apollo  who  gave  him  prophetic  power,  and 
made  him  a  man  of  brief,  terse  speech. 

The  sacred  Spring  of  the  temple  rose  on  the  forest-cov- 
ered mountain  of  Mycale  above  the  city  of  Priene  where 
Bias,  one  of  the  Seven  Wise  Men  of  Greece,  was  bom. 


CARIA  367 

It  is  thus  seen  that  this  wonderful  Spring  rose  some 
thirty  miles  from  the  seat  of  the  oracle;  but  it  imme- 
diately dove  into  the  earth  again,  and  crossed  under  the 
river  Maeander,  and  under  a  bay  of  the  sea,  and  came  up 
by  the  temple  to  perform  its  religious  offices.  And  this 
was  not  the  only  journey  that  the  Spring  is  said  to  have 
performed. 

The  temple  was  a  magnificent  structure  of  white  and 
bluish  marble,  with  112  columns  63  feet  high  and  63^  feet 
in  diameter.  The  approach  to  the  building  was  called 
The  Sacred  Way,  and  was  bordered  on  each  side  with  a 
long  row  of  figures,  sitting  with  feet  close  together  and 
hands  on  knees,  done  in  the  Egyptian  manner  and 
carved,  each  one  and  its  chair,  out  of  a  single  stone. 

The  oracle  was  the  fourth  in  importance  in  all  the 
Grecian  territory,  and  was  among  a  nimiber  that  Croesus 
put  to  a  test  before  deciding  which  one  he  would  ask  what 
would  be  the  outcome  of  a  campaign  against  the  Persians 
under  Cyrus.  Through  messengers,  he  asked  each  one  of 
the  oracles  under  test  what  he  was  doing  at  that  moment, 
and  the  oracles  of  Delphi  and  Amphiaraus  gave  the 
correct  reply.  The  Delphic  oracle's  answer  was  given  in 
verse,  and,  as  the  messenger  uttered  the  last  word  of  his 
question,  the  priestess  without  a  pause  replied; — "I 
understand  the  dvunb,  and  hear  him  that  does  not  speak; 
the  savor  of  the  hard-shelled  tortoise  boiled  in  brass  with 
the  flesh  of  lamb  strikes  on  my  senses;  brass  is  laid  be- 
neath it,  and  brass  is  put  over  it."  As  Croesus  was  cook- 
ing a  tortoise  and  lamb  in  a  cauldron  of  brass  with  a 
brazen  lid,  he  was  convinced  of  the  power  of  these  two 
oracles  to  read  the  future,  and,  having  put  the  question 
about  the  campaign,  he  was  told  that  if  he  marched 
against  the  Persians  he  would  overthrow  a  great  empire. 

Thereupon  he  went  to  war — and  his  own  kingdom  was 


368  ASIA  MINOR 

overthrown;  but  that,  as  the  oracles  afterwards  declared, 
was  the  empire  they  meant. 

It  has  been  claimed  that  there  was  something  uncanny 
in  this  test  case;  but,  whether  or  not  it  was  Eurybatus, 
the  Privy  Councillor  of  Croesus,  who  divulged  the  king's 
war  plans  to  Cyrus,  the  story  carries  the  moral  that  a 
seer's  knowledge  of  the  future  cannot  be  fathomed  with 
a  line  that,  like  Croesus',  does  not  reach  beyond  the 
present. 

Xerxes,  more  successful  than  in  his  attempt  on  the 
temple  at  Delphi,  burned  the  Branchidee's  building  and 
secured  all  of  its  treasures,  receiving  them,  according  to 
some  of  his  supporters,  as  presents  from  the  generous 
priests,  who  immediately  decamped  with  the  commander 
and  were  settled  by  him  at  Sogdiana,  where  Alexander, 
some  150  years  later,  slew  all  their  descendants  in 
abhorrence. 

Perhaps  the  priests  did  not  go  empty  handed  to  Sog- 
diana, which  became  Afghanistan  with  the  capital  city 
at  Bokara,  whose  Ameer  was  called  the  richest  man  in 
the  world  before  the  collapse  of  the  Russian  empire. 

It  was  at  this  time,  when  Xerxes  was  packing  up  his 
presents,  or  his  plunder,  that  the  Spring  made  another 
journey  and  disappeared  from  its  basin  by  the  temple. 

Later,  the  town  of  Miletus  rebuilt  the  burned  temple 
on  a  very  magnificent  scale,  and  conducted  the  seer's 
department  as  a  municipal  enterprise  under  the  name  of 
the  oracle  of  Apollo  Didymseus,  which  was  also  author- 
ized to  act  as  a  mint  and  issue  money. 

Alexander  paid  a  visit  to  the  oracle  under  its  new 
management,  and  the  absent  Spring  reappeared  on  that 
occasion  and  resumed  its  former  functions. 

This  oracle,  like  all  others,  suffered  great  loss  of  patron- 
age when  heathenism  was  undermined  by  skepticism, 


CARIA  369 

about  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  Era;  but  it  after- 
wards shared  in  the  revival  of  oracle-consultation  that 
occurred  during  the  third  and  fourth  centuries  a.d. 
After  the  death  of  Julian,  however,  it  began  to  go  to 
decay,  and  today  but  two  of  its  temple's  columns  stand 
to  testify  to  the  accuracy  of  those  who  described  it  and 
its  Spring  in  the  time  of  its  prime. 

Strabo;XVII.  i.    §43- 


267 

Achillean  Fountain 

The  Achillean  fountain  was  in  Miletus,  and  it  was  con- 
sidered notable  because,  while  its  water  was  sweet,  the 
sediment  that  it  deposited  was  brackish ;  notwithstanding 
which  the  Milesians  regarded  it  with  great  consideration 
as  Achilles  had  bathed  in  it  to  purify  himself,  when  he 
discovered  that  Trambelus,  a  king  of  the  Leleges  whom 
he  had  slain,  was  a  relative  of  his  friend  Telamon. 

The  city  of  Miletus  has  been  announced  by  some 
explorers  as  represented  by  ruins  found  at  Myus;  but 
others  assume  it  to  have  been  where  a  pestilential  swamp 
of  mud  and  water,  formed  by  the  river  Masander,  has 
destroyed  all  traces  of  the  city  and  its  fountain. 

Athenaeus;  II.  19. 


268 

Mylasa 

The  Salt  Spring  of  Mylasa  was  regarded  as  a  more 
remarkable  fountain  than  that  in  the  Erechtheium  at 
Athens,  because  it  was  four  times  as  far  from  the  sea,  the 
ocean  being  eighty  stadia  distant. 


370  ASIA  MINOR 

Like  the  salty  Spring  at  Athens,  it  was  also  in  a 
temple,  that  of  the  god  the  Carians  called  in  their 
dialect  Osogo. 

The  information  given  about  Osogo,  in  connection 
with  this  Spring,  suggests  that  a  number  of  the  three 
hundred  Jupiters,  who  were  reckoned  to  have  been 
mentioned  by  ancient  writers,  may  be  accounted  for  by 
the  Grecian  practice  of  prefixing  Zeus  to  the  name  of  the 
principal  deity  of  all  peoples  with  whose  divinities  they 
became  acquainted;  for  the  Carians  claimed  to  be  ab- 
originals, with  national  gods,  and  they  are  distinctly 
stated,  in  a  very  ancient  instance  of  the  ceremony  of 
drumming  out  of  camp,  to  have  gathered  together,  men, 
women  and  children,  and  with  loud  noises  to  have  driven 
out  of  the  country  all  gods  but  their  own  national  deities. 
When,  therefore,  writers  designated  this  aboriginal  god 
of  the  Carians  as  Zeus  Osogo,  it  is  clear  that  it  was  only 
an  intimation  to  Greek  readers  that  he  was  the  principal 
Carian  god,  and  not  an  assertion  that  the  Carians  called 
him  Zeus. 

The  temple,  over  which  the  Spring  was  built,  was  the 
most  magnificent  of  the  white  marble  shrines  of  the  city, 
of  which  it  possessed  so  many  that  the  wit  Stratonicus, 
having  remarked  that  there  seemed  to  be  more  of  them 
than  there  were  citizens,  began  a  public  address  with 
the  words,  "Hear  me,  O  ye  Temples!" 

Moore  was  indebted  to  another  wit,  Hybreas,  one  of 
the  citizens,  who,  like  King  Oxylus,  was  a  muleteer  but 
became  the  greatest  orator  of  his  time,  and  the  fore- 
most citizen  of  Mylasa,  and  who  in  a  speech  about 
Euthymus,  the  city's  tyrant,  said  that  he  was  a  neces- 
sary evil,  for  the  state  could  live  neither  with  him  nor 
without  him. 

The  temple  over  the  Spring  may  have  been  demolished 


CARIA  371 

by  time,  or  by  the  Turks,  who  destroyed  ancient  edifices 
to  obtain  material  for  constructing  their  mosques,  for  it 
has  not  been  identified  among  the  ruins  over  which  is 
built  the  modern  town  of  Melosso. 

Pausanias;  VIII.  10. 
Athenaeus;  VIII.  41. 
Strabo;XIV.  2.    §24. 


LYCIA 

269 
Mela 

The  legend  of  the  Spring  of  Mela  has  a  two-fold  in- 
terest, first,  as  giving  another  illustration  of  the  shortness 
of  Latona's  temper,  which,  as  seen  in  the  incident  of 
Diana's  metamorphosing  Actseon,  was  transmitted  to 
her  daughter;  and  next,  in  showing  the  origin  of  those 
natural  attendants  and  zealous  guardians  of  all  good 
Springs,  the  little  frogs. 

The  garrulity  of  guides,  even  back  to  time  immemorial, 
is  also  pleasingly  indicated  by  attributing  the  best 
account  of  the  Spring's  origin  to  a  Lycian  guide  who,  as 
he  was  conducting  a  traveler  through  that  country  in 
Asia  Minor,  stopped  at  this  Spring,  and,  by  much  mys- 
tery and  whispered  muttering,  secured  an  extra  gratuity 
to  tell  the  legend. 

Latona,  fleeing  from  the  wrath  of  Juno,  with  her  babies, 
Apollo  and  Diana,  came  to  the  Spring  of  fine  water  called 
Mela,  which  was  in  the  bottom  of  a  valley,  among  bushy 
osiers  and  bulrushes  and  the  sedges,  natural  to  fenny 
spots,  that  some  countrymen  under  the  direction  of 
Neocles,  a  shepherd,  were  gathering. 

When  Latona  stooped  to  take  up  some  of  the  cool 
water  for  the  twins,  the  surly  rustics  forbade  her  using  it ; 
she  explained  that  she  had  no  intention  of  bathing  in  it, 
and  wished  only  to  assuage  the  thirst  of  herself  and  the 
infants.    The  miserable  country  bumpkins,  however,  per- 

372 


LYCIA  373 

sisted  in  not  letting  her  taste  the  water ;  moreover,  they 
added  threats  and  abusive  language,  and  even  went 
further,  riling  the  water  with  their  feet  and  hands,  and 
stirring  up  the  soft  mud  of  the  bottom  by  spitefully 
jimiping  to  and  fro. 

The  resentment  of  the  goddess  was  so  great  that  she 
forgot  her  thirst,  and,  raising  her  hands  to  heaven,  she 
cried  out,  "For  ever  may  you  live  in  that  Spring." 

At  once;  "the  backs  of  these  wretches  united  with 
their  heads;  their  necks  seemed  as  if  cut  off,  their  back- 
bones became  green;  their  bellies,  the  greatest  part  of 
their  bodies,  became  white,  and,  as  new-made  frogs,  they 
leaped  about  in  the  muddy  water  and  seemed  to  say, 
'Sub  aqua,  sub  aqua,'"  as  their  descendants  have  con- 
tinued to  do,  even  down  to  the  latest  times,  and,  irre- 
spective of  the  language  of  the  country  whose  Springs  they 
may  be  frequenting. 

It  is  not  possible  to  place  this  Spring  concisely,  but  it 
may  have  been  in  the  grove  of  Latona,  seven  and  a  half 
miles  from  Calynda  on  the  present  Gulf  of  Makri;  the 
Spring  connected  with  the  birth  of  the  twins  has,  however, 
been  readily  located  in  the  island  of  Delos. 

Ovid;  Meta.  VI.    Fable  3. 


270 
DiNUS 

The  Spring  of  Dinus  was  a  fountain  of  naturally  sweet 
water  that,  at  the  proper  time,  changed  suddenly  to  sea- 
saltiness. 

The  Spring  was  in  Lycia  near  the  sea  where  there  was  a 
sacred  grove  and  an  oracle  of  Apollo,  of  which  the  foun- 
tain was  a  necessary  feature. 
18 


374  ASIA  MINOR 

The  oracle  was  consulted  in  an  unusual  and  unique 
manner.  Inquirers  were  obliged  to  have  two  wooden 
spits,  each  containing  ten  pieces  of  roast  meat,  which 
they  threw  into  the  Spring.  The  priests  then  sat  around 
in  solemn  silence,  and  the  inquirer  looked  on  to  see  what 
would  happen;  and  if  he  was  unacquainted  with  the 
character  of  the  proceedings  he  was  usually  considerably 
terrified;  for  the  water  would  suddenly  become  salt;  and 
then  an  incredible  number  of  fish  of  all  sorts  would  surge 
up  in  the  fountain,  some  of  them  of  such  vast  size,  and 
so  near  at  hand,  as  to  frighten  even  stout-hearted  ob- 
servers. 

From  this  churning  chaos  of  fish,  in  some  way  that 
was  probably  known  to  the  priests  alone,  conclusions  were 
drawn  and  answers  were  given  to  the  inquirer  in  regard 
to  the  matter  concerning  which  he  sought  information. 

Atbenaeus;  VIII.  8. 


271  ; 

LiMYRA 

The  fountain  of  Limyra  was  a  traveling  Spring  that  not 
infrequently  made  its  way  through  neighboring  localities ; 
and  it  was  remarked  as  a  singular  matter  that  the  fish 
that  lived  in  the  Spring  always  accompanied  the  waters 
in  their  migrations. 

Those  fish  were  highly  venerated  in  the  district  through 
which  they  attended  the  moving  Spring,  and  were  con- 
sulted as  oracles  by  the  inhabitants,  who  offered  them 
food  and  then  drew  their  own  conclusions  according  to 
the  actions  of  the  finny  prophets. 

If  the  fish  seized  the  food  with  avidity,  that  was  con- 
sidered tantamount  to  a  propitious  answer;  but  if  they 


LYCIA  375 

rejected  it  and  flipped  it  away  with  their  tails,  then  the 
reply  was  assumed  to  be  unfavorable. 

The  ruins  of  Limyra  are  found  above  Cape  Fineka. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  i8. 


272 
Myra 

At  Myra  the  fish  in  the  fountain  of  Apollo  known  as 
Surium,  appeared  and  gave  oracular  presages  when 
summoned  three  times  by  the  sound  of  a  flute. 

The  presages  were  determined  exactly  as  they  were 
in  the  case  of  the  future-reading  fish  of  the  fountain  of 
Limyra. 

Myra,  which  was  the  capital  of  Lycia,  was  on  the  River 
Andracus,  and  was  visited  by  the  Apostle  Paul,  when 
being  taken  as  a  prisoner  to  Rome,  as  related  in  the  27th 
chapter  of  The  Acts. 

It  continues  as  a  town  under  its  old  name  and  the  ruins 
of  its  antiquity  are  among  the  handsomest  in  the  country. 

Pliny;  XXXII.  8. 


273 

Cyane^ 

The  Well  of  Cyaneae  was  the  most  important  part  of 
the  oracle  of  Apollo  Thyrxis  in  Lycia,  There  was  such 
truth  in  its  water  that  it  showed  anyone  looking  into  it 
whatever  he  wanted  to  know. 

It  was  said  to  be  similar  to  the  Well  of  Patrae  in  Achaia ; 
but  the  latter  Well,  although  the  process  of  consulting  it 
was  very  elaborate,  seems  to  have  been  able  to  do  no 
more  than  tell  whether  a  sick  person  would  succumb  or 


376  ASIA  MINOR 

would  recover — probably  by  showing  the  reflection  either 
of  a  corpse  or  a  person  in  good  health. 

Cyanese  is  supposed  to  be  one  of  the  three  sites  that 
have  been  discovered  near  the  port  of  Tristomo. 

Pausanias;  VII.  21. 


274 

Plane  Tree  Fountain 

In  close  proximity  to  a  Lycian  fountain  of  most  re- 
freshing coolness,  there  was  a  famous  plane  tree  that 
presented  the  foliage  of  a  grove,  and  whose  branches 
equaled  ordinary  trees  in  size. 

There  was  a  cavity  in  the  tree  wherein  was  placed  a 
circle  of  stone  seats  covered  with  moss,  and  the  consul 
Lucinius  Mucianus  gave  a  banquet  in  the  tree  to  eighteen 
persons  who  were  so  greatly  pleased  with  the  entertain- 
ment that  a  raging  rain  failed  to  interfere  with  their 
enjoyment. 

Pliny;  XII.  S. 


CILICIA 
275 

PiKRON   HyDOR 

Twenty  stadia  to  the  northward  of  the  promontory 
Corycus,  there  was  what  was  called  the  Corycian  Cave.  It 
was  in  reality  a  large  valley  of  a  circular  form,  complete- 
ly surrounded  by  a  ridge  of  rock  of  considerable  height. 

The  bottom  was  irregular  in  form  and  was  rocky,  but 
interspersed  with  spots  that  produced  saffron. 

The  valley  contained  a  cave  in  which  rose  the  Pikron 
Hydor,  a  Spring  of  pure  and  translucent  water  which 
immediately  buried  itself  in  the  ground,  and  continued 
a  subterranean  course  until  it  discharged  into  the  sea. 

The  saffron  that  grew  in  the  neighborhood  of  this 
Spring  was  more  highly  esteemed  than  that  produced 
anywhere  else,  and  it  was  used  in  large  quantities  for 
perfuming  the  Roman  theaters.  For  that  use  the  flowers 
were  reduced  to  powder  and  incorporated  with  water 
which  was  then  sprayed  into  the  auditorium  through  a. 
gigantic  overhead  atomizer  that  was  formed  of  many 
pipes  of  the  tiniest  diameter. 

This  Spring  was  in  the  home  of,  and  nourished  one  of 
the  monsters  of  antiquity  that  stalks  through  the  modem 
world  and  still  retains  the  traits  anciently  ascribed  to  it ; 
its  various  voices,  ranging  from  the  roar  of  a  bull  to  the 
hiss  of  a  serpent ;  its  exceeding  swiftness ;  its  fondness  for 
tossing  the  ocean  about  and  scattering  ships,  and  for 
raising  great  clouds  of  dust  on  land — all  of  these  traits 

377 


378  ASIA  MINOR 

are  as  familiar  to  moderns  as  is  its  name,  Typhon,  some- 
times spelled  Typhoon  or  even  Hurricane. 

In  this  monster's  early  life  it  was  the  father  of  a  number 
of  other  monsters;  of  the  dogs  Cerberus  and  Orthus,  the 
Hydra,  the  Chimsera,  and  of  the  Sphinx;  as  also  of  the 
bad,  but  not  of  the  good  winds. 

The  meaning  of  the  Spring's  name,  Pikron  Hydor,  was 
Bitter  Water;  and  in  the  promontory's  name  can  be  seen 
the  garden  name  of  the  saffron  flower,  the  crocus. 

The  Cape  is  now  called  Korghoz,  but  the  home  of  the 
Spring  behind  the  rocky  ridge  some  two  miles  inland  has 
not  yet  been  examined. 

Strabo;XIV.  s.     5  S. 

Hesiod;  Theogony;  line  845-907. 


276 

Pyramus 

The  Pyramus  River  had  its  source  in  the  middle  of  the 
plain  of  Cilicia  near  the  town  of  Arabissus.  After  falling 
into  a  large  underground  channel,  it  sprang  out  of  the 
earth  again  with  such  force  that  an  arrow  could  scarcely 
be  pushed  into  the  water. 

It  flowed  through  a  narrow  chasm  that  a  hare  could 
leap  across,  a  mere  split  in  the  rock,  the  projections  of 
one  side  coinciding  exactly  with  the  hollows  on  the  other, 
through  which  the  powerful  stream  rushed  with  roarings 
that  resembled  the  reverberations  of  thunder. 

According  to  an  oracle,  the  matter  the  river  forced 
into  the  sea  would  one  day  connect  the  mainland  with  the 
island  of  Cyprus. 

The  river,  once  named  the  Leucosyrus,  is  now  called 
Seihun,  and  Jechun. 

Strabo;  XII.  2.     J  4. 


CILICIA  379 

277 
Cydnus 

The  sources  of  the  Cydnus  were  near  the  town  of  Tar- 
sus on  the  southern  side  of  the  Taurus  range  of  moun- 
tains; the  river  flowed  through  the  center  of  the  city- 
while  its  waters  were  still  spring-cold,  and  on  that  account 
they  were  recommended  for  use  in  the  treatment  of  vari- 
ous ailments  of  men  and  animals — gout,  and  swellings  of 
the  sinews,  among  others.  Nevertheless,  the  river  made 
Alexander  the  Great  violently  ill  after  bathing  in  it  when 
he  was  overheated,  and  the  resulting  fever  detained  him 
in  the  town  for  several  weeks. 

The  cause  of  the  coldness  of  the  water  was  the  snow 
that  formed  the  river's  sources. 

Tarsus  was  the  capital  of  Cilicia  and  was  said  to  have 
been  founded  by  Triptolemus  while  he  was  searching  for 
lo.  It  was  the  birthplace  of  St.  Paul,  and  was  of  such 
note  as  a  center  of  learning  that  its  philosophers  were 
held  to  surpass  those  of  even  Athens  and  Alexandria, 
from  which  circumstance  may  have  arisen  the  belief  that 
the  intellect  was  sharpened  by  the  waters  of  the  Cydnus, 
if  that  was  the  river  referred  to  under  the  name  of  Nus. 

The  stream  near  its  mouth  formerly  expanded  into  a 
lake,  but  this  was  gradually  filled  with  sediment  and 
eventually  became,  as  it  is  now,  a  plain. 

It  was  the  Cydnus  that  Cleopatra  selected  to  bear  the 
gorgeous  pageant  in  which  she  presented  herself  to  An- 
tony unarrayed,  to  represent  Aphrodite. 

The  stream,  which  was  often  spoken  of  as  The  River  of 
Tarsus,  is  now  called  the  Tersoos  Tchy. 

Strabo:  XIV.  S-  10. 


COLCHIS 

.  278 
The  Fountains  of  Heph^stus 

The  Argonauts,  having  defeated  Amycus  at  his  Spring, 
appropriated  a  quantity  of  booty  and  resumed  their 
voyage,  to  Colchis,  during  which  they  made  a  landing  to 
relieve  Phineus  from  the  persecutions  of  the  "hounds  of 
Zeus, "  as  the  Harpies  were  called. 

They  sailed  past  the  land  of  the  Tibareni  whose  pecu- 
liar custom  might  have  been  traced  to  Edmond  About 
if  his  "Cas  de  M.  Guerin"  had  been  written  some  three 
thousand  and  odd  years  earlier. 

Further  on,  at  the  Isle  of  Ares,  they  were  assailed  by 
the  birds  that  Hercules  drove  from  the  Stymphalian 
Marsh,  and  they  put  them  to  flight  by  the  same  noisy 
means  that  hero  employed,  although  not  before  the  birds, 
that  had  become  able  to  flip  their  sharp-pointed  feathers 
from  their  wings  with  the  accuracy  of  arrows,  had  rained 
on  the  crew  a  shower  of  shafts  that  wounded  one  of  their 
number. 

Passing  the  Caucasus  Mountains,  they  heard  the 
agonized  screams  of  Prometheus,  chained  to  the  rock  for 
having  shown  man  how  to  make  fire;  and  actually  saw 
with  their  own  eyes  the  savage  eagle  engaged  in  eating 
out  his  liver  while  the  Argo  rocked  under  the  thrusts  of 
its  powerful  wings  as  it  poised  itself  at  the  feast. 

This  marrow-freezing  sight  was  within  a  day's  row  of 
their  destination,  Colchis,  which  they  reached  that  night. 

380 


COLCHIS  ;.  381 

The  next  day  Jason  called  on  ^etes  to  prefer  his  re- 
quest for  the  Golden  Fleece,  which  he  secured  after 
performing  some  miraculous  feats  by  means  of  the  en- 
chantments of  Petes'  daughter  Medea,  who  had  fallen 
in  love  with  the  young  man  at  first  sight.  w 

It  was  at  that  visit  that  Jason  saw  for  the  first  time  the 
fountains  of  Hephaestus,  the  fatherless  son  that  Hera 
produced  several  thousand  years  before  the  Christian  Era, 
when  she  was  in  a  pique  with  Zeus  for  producing  his 
motherless  daughter  Athena. 

The  fountains  were  the  most  wonderful  of  a  munber 
of  gifts  that  Hephasstus  had  fashioned  or  produced  for 
^etes,  in  gratitude  for  a  kindness  once  done  him  by  the 
latter's  father.  Besides  decorations  for  his  house  and 
grounds,  there  were  such  marvelous  specimens  of  live 
stock  as  bulls  with  brazen  feet,  and  brazen  mouths 
from  which  they  blew  fearful  blasts  of  fire ;  and  there  was 
a  plow  fashioned  from  a  single  diamond  or  piece  of 
adamant,  with  which  Jason  had  to  furrow  a  field  after 
subduing  the  bulls  and  harnessing  them  to  that  agricul- 
tural gem. 

One  sees  intuitively  the  natural  suggestion  that  created 
these  fire-breathing  bulls  and  their  protective  metal 
hoofs ;  for  in  this  country  of  .^etes  whose  physical  features 
have  undergone  little  change,  and  whose  River  Phasis  is 
still  the  River  Faz,  an  observer,  looking  for  the  first  time 
at  a  Georgian  landscape,  and  seeing  a  plowing  ox  pass 
between  his  eye  and  one  of  the  burning  fountains  of 
naphtha  that  still  abound  in  the  country  to  the  Caspian 
Sea,  would  instinctively  fancy  that  the  flame  came  from 
the  ox's  mouth,  and  that  brazen  hoofs  were  better 
adapted  than  horn  ones  for  plowing  in  such  fiery  fields. 

The  fountains  were  four  eternal  Springs  that  occupied 
the  place  of  the  usual  jet  and  basin  set  in  the  atrium  of 


382  ASIA  MINOR 

ancient  mansions.  They  were  bowered  with  blossoming 
vines  and  tender  green  foliage,  and  would  seem  to  have 
originated  in  Calanus'  metaphorical  fountains  of  India. 
One  of  them  gushed  with  milk;  from  another  flowed 
wine;  and  the  third  vied  with  the  surrounding  blossoms 
in  making  the  air  fragrant  with  the  scented  unguents 
that  bubbled  in  its  basin.  The  fourth  spouted  from  a 
hollow  rock  in  a  constant  stream  of  water  that  alternated 
twice  a  day  in  temperature,  being  tepid  when  the  Pleiades 
set,  and  gelid  when  that  starry  cluster  rose  again. 

Apollonius  Rhodius  III.  line  332. 
ApoUonius  Rhodius  II.  line  1034. 
Pausanias;VIII.  18. 


^«*. 


GREEK  ISLANDS 

ITHACA 

279 

Arethusa 

The  fountain  of  Arethusa  is  first  mentioned  by  Homer 
on  the  occasion  of  Ulysses'  return  to  his  own  island  of 
Ithaca,  which  he  does  not  recognize  after  his  twenty 
years'  absence. 

A  youthful  swain,  with  a  javelin  and  wearing  painted 
sandals,  who  then  opportunely  appears,  being  asked 
what  island  it  is,  gives  its  name  and  requests  to  know 
something  about  the  inquiring  stranger.  In  reply, 
Ulysses  with  his  usual  readiness  elaborates  an  entirely 
fictitious  story  that  so  charms  the  guileful  swain  that  he 
at  once  appears  in  propria  persona  as  the  goddess  Pallas 
in  all  the  brightness  of  her  divinity,  and  she  instructs 
Ulysses  in  the  course  that  he  is  to  pursue  to  rid  the  earth 
of  his  wife's  unwelcome  suitors — the  greedy  horde  that 
has,  for  years,  been  living  in  his  palace  and  dissipating 
his  possessions. 

To  prevent  any  intimation  of  the  coming  vengeance 
before  the  plan  is  ripe,  the  goddess  spreads  a  bark  of 
wrinkles  over  his  face,  turns  his  red  hair  to  white,  changes 
his  clothing  into  a  dirty  and  disreputable  deerskin,  and, 
having  metamorphosed  him  into  an  aged  and  unsightly 
beggar  that  even  Penelope  would  never  recognize,  she 

383 


384  GREEK  ISLANDS 

tells  him  to  go  to  his  master  of  the  herds,  Eimiasus,  and 
adds; — 

"At  the  Coracian  rock  he  now  resides, 
Where  Arethusa's  sable  water  glides; 
The  sable  water  and  the  copious  mast 
Swell  the  fat  herd;  luxuriant,  large  repast! 
With  him  rest  peaceful  in  the  rural  cell. 
And  all  you  ask  his  faithful  tongue  shall  tell." 

This,  as  before  said,  is  the  first  existing  mention  of  a 
fountain  of  Arethusa.  The  Spring  is  less  than  fifty  miles 
from  the  mouth  of  the  River  Alpheus,  as  against  nearly 
three  hundred  from  the  river  to  the  island  of  Sicily,  and 
anyone  who  wishes  to  is  at  liberty  to  believe  that  the 
nymph  Arethusa,  after  being  chased  over  a  large  part  of 
Greece,  was  still  fresh  enough  to  run  an  additional  three 
hundred  miles  under  the  sea  to  Sicily  in  preference  to 
taking  the  short  cut  to  Ithaca;  and  to  contend  that  the 
Sicilians  have  not  been  deceiving  the  classical  world  for  a 
couple  of  thousand  years.  ,1,1 

This  fountain,  as  if  seeking  escape  from  a  hasty  pursuer, 
still  gushes  out  forcefully  at  the  base  of  a  cliff  that 
faces  the  sea  on  the  southeast  end  of  Ithaca,  which 
is  west  of  the  coast  of  Acarnania  on  the  mainland  of 
Greece. 

The  cliff  is  still  called  Korax,  Homer's  Coracian  rock; 
and  the  foundations  of  the  so-called  Castle  of  Ulysses 
whose  walls  rang  daily  with  the  riotous  revels  of  the  selfish 
smtors,  are  still  traceable,  though  naturally  nothing 
remains  to  mark  the  site  of  the  humble  herder's  rustic 
dwelling  that  stood  near  Arethusa's  sable  water.  (See 
No.  410). 

Odyssey;  XIII.  470,  447  and  496. 


ITHACA  385 

280  ^ 

Penelope's  Spring 

In  the  temple  at  Ephesus  there  was  a  work,  by  the 
statuary  Thraso,  called  Penelope's  Spring.  It  included  a 
figure  of  Eurycleia,  the  nurse  of  Ulysses,  and  may  have 
commemorated  the  fountain  with  whose  water  she  was 
enabled  to  penetrate  the  disguise  of  a  beggar's  rags  and 
dust  that  he  adopted  to  conceal  his  identity,  on  his  return 
to  Ithaca  after  the  Trojan  campaign. 

Homer  mentions  the  Spring  as  one  of  the  purest,  and 
it  may  have  been  one  of  Penelope's  favorites  to  which 
she  sent  the  nurse  for  water  for  bathing  her  disguised 
husband. 

Having  placed  the  stranger  in  a  seat  by  the  crackling 
fire,  Eurycleia  tempered  the  cold  Spring  water  in  a  bath- 
ing basin  and  began  her  work  with  the  king's  grimy  feet 
and  legs,  on  one  of  which  she  soon  uncovered  a  scar  below 
the  royal  knee  which  marked  the  wound  made  by  the 
tusk  of  a  boar,  in  a  boyhood  hunt  on  Mt.  Parnassus. 

The  loving  old  nurse,  in  the  excitement  of  recognizing 
the  narrow  white  scar  revealed  by  the  water  and  lit  up 
by  the  firelight,  upset  the  basin  and  flooded  the  palace 
floor,  and  in  another  instant  would  have  shouted  aloud 
in  her  joy  at  the  discovery  had  not  the  wily  king  clapped 
a  royal  hand  over  the  opening  lips,  and  whispered  a 
caution  not  to  reveal  his  identity  and  frighten  away  the 
suitors  before  he  could  carry  out  his  plans  to  dispatch 
them  for  their  persecutions  of  Penelope. 

To  finish  her  pleasant  task,  Eur3^cleia  had  to  go  again 
to  the  Spring,  and  her  mood  as  expressed  in  her  features 
while  she  drew  the  second  supply  was  well  calculated  to 
add  interest  to  a  representation  of  an  old  woman  at  a 
fountain. 

25 


386  GREEK  ISLANDS 

Among  Homer's  Springs,  mention  is  made  of  other 
fountains  in  the  island  of  Ithaca  which  has  retained  its 
name  throughout  the  ages.     (See  No.  410.) 

Strabo;  XIV.  I.     §33. 

04yssey;  JCIX.  403.  4S0.  544.  548,  587. 

Odyssey;  XXIII.  5. 


^GINA 
281 

PSAMATHE 

The  fountain  of  Psamathe  was  in  the  territory  of  Ar- 
golis.  Psamathe  appears  to  have  been  credited  with 
evincing  more  versatility  than  the  average  Greek  virgin 
of  fountains,  as  it  is  affirmed  by  some  that  she  also  as- 
sumed the  form  of  a  fish  and  that  of  a  seal  in  evading 
her  lover  ^acus  whose  perseverance,  however,  succeeded 
and  resulted  in  their  becoming  the  parents  of  Phocus. 

Psamathe  was  the  sister  of  Lycomedes  the  King  of 
Cyros,  and  was  one  of  the  Nereides,  the  nymphs  of  the 
Mediterranean,  the  fifty  daughters  of  Nereus  and  Doris, 
and  she  naturally  inherited  the  power  of  changing  that 
was  possessed  by  her  father.  The  Nereides  are  to  be 
carefully  distinguished  from  the  Oceanides,  the  three 
thousand  children  of  Oceanus  and  Tethys,  who  were  the 
nymphs  of  the  great  ocean  beyond  the  inland  sea;  as 
well  as  from  the  even  more  numerous  Naiades  who  were 
the  nymphs  of  fresh  water  Springs  and  Wells  and  brooks. 

The  history  of  Psamathe  and  of  her  connections 
abounds  with  remarkable  changes,  and  the  name  itself 
seems  to  be  associated  with  transformation.  Later  on, 
Psamathe  was  the  wife  of  Proteus  whose  power  of 
asstuning  different  forms  was  absolutely  unlimited,  and 
whose  memory  is  perpetuated  by  an  English  adjective  in 
daily  use. 

Thetis,    one    of    Psamathe's   forty-nine   sisters,    had 

387 


388  GREEK  ISLANDS 

changed  into  a  bird,  a  tree,  a  tiger,  and  even  into  water, 
before  becoming  the  bride  of  Phocus'  half  brother  Peleus 
and  the  mother  of  the  hero  Achilles.  Thetis  and  Peleus 
were  the  pair  who  planted  the  seed  of  the  Trojan  war 
that  was  afterwards  harvested  by  Helen.  Their  wedding 
was  attended  by  all  of  the  gods  and  goddesses  save  only 
Discord  who  had  been  overlooked;  she,  however,  appeared 
for  an  instant  at  the  festivities  and  threw  in  the  midst 
of  the  throng  a  present,  a  golden  apple  to  which  was 
attached  the  inscription,  "For  the  Fairest." 

There  was  no  difference  of  opinion  as  to  who  were  the 
fairest  three,  but  the  narrowing  down  of  the  choice  to 
one  was  left  to  Paris  whose  decision  gave  the  apple  to 
Venus;  Helen  to  Paris;  and  destruction  to  Troy. 

iEacus  himself,  the  ruler  of  one  of  the  most  celebrated 
Greek  islands,  JEgina,  the  birthplace  of  silver  coinage,- 
when  he  lost  his  subjects  by  a  virulent  plague,  prayed 
that  the  ants  that  swarmed  in  one  of  his  trees,  grown  from 
an  acorn  of  the  Talking  Oak  of  Dodona,  might  be  changed 
into  men  to  replace  them,  and,  being  the  most  pious  of 
all  the  Greeks,  his  prayer  was  answered  and  the  ants, 
transformed  as  desired,  gave  ^acus  nearly  half  a  million 
subjects.  Of  those  transfigured  insects,  the  Myrmidons, 
the  ant-sprung  warriors,  were  the  troops  that  accom- 
panied i^acus'  grandson  Achilles  to  the  Trojan  war,  the 
war  in  which  Phocus'  grandson  Epeus  secured  with  his 
wooden  horse  that  which  Achilles  with  his  ant-men  had 
been  unable  to  accomplish. 

In  the  end,  .^acus  became  the  custodian  of  the  keys  of 
Hades. 

Psamathe's  powers  were  not  confined  to  changing  her 
own  form  but  were  also  exertible  over  others,  and  she 
thus  became  the  creator  of  what  was  one  of  the  most  life- 
like statues  that  ever  appeared  in  the  realm  of  Art. 


^GINA  389 

Peleus,  with  a  quoit  that  became  an  historical  exhibit, 
having  killed  his  half  brother  Phocus,  the  son  of  Psa- 
mathe,  she  in  revenge  sent  a  monster  wolf  to  ravage 
Peleus'  herds;  and  not  until  the  wolf  had  nearly  exter- 
minated his  live  stock  was  she  induced,  by  her  sister 
Thetis,  to  stop  the  carnage,  which  she  did  in  an  instant 
by  changing  the  brute  in  its  minutest  details  into  a  marble 
statue  that  could  only  be  distinguished  from  the  original 
by  its  color. 

One  who  is  fond  of  following  the  intricacies  of  mental 
problems  may  like  to  attempt  to  trace  the  cause  of  the 
similarity  between  this  and  two  other  incidents  closely 
connected  with  it,  by  the  name  Psamathe  in  one  case, 
and  by  Psamathe's  son  Phocus  in  the  other.  Thus,  some 
years  before,  Cephalus  told  Phocus  that  Themis,  angry 
because  the  Sphinx's  occupation  had  ceased  when  CEdi- 
pus  had  solved  its  riddle,  sent  a  pestiferous  fox  to  take  its 
place.  Thereupon  Cephalus  hunted  the  fox  with  his  dog 
Laslaps  (Tempest)  made  by  Vulcan,  and  warranted  to 
outrun  any  wild  beast ;  a  guarantee  that  in  this  test  was 
not  made  good,  as  neither  could  gain  on  the  other  and 
there  was  a  tie  in  the  running.  Then,  as  with  faltering 
confidence  Cephalus  was  about  to  put  to  proof  another 
guarantee  by  throwing  a  javelin  warranted  never  to  miss, 
some  god,  desiring  that  both  animals  might  remain  un- 
conquered,  changed  them  in  a  twinkling  into  statues  of 
solid  marble  that  remained  upon  the  plain,  one  showing 
the  fox  fleeing,  and  the  other,  the  dog  at  his  flank  barking 
in  pursuit. 

The  other  incident  is  that  another,  a  second  Psamathe, 
the  daughter  of  Crotopus,  King  of  Argos,  having  aban- 
doned her  infant,  of  whom  Apollo  was  the  father,  it  was 
killed  by  the  sheep-dogs  belonging  to  Crotopus. 

Thereupon  Apollo  to  avenge  his  progeny's  death  sent 


390  GREEK  ISLANDS 

a  monster  called  "Punishment,"  which  took  Argive 
children  away  from  their  mothers,  until  one  Coroebus 
killed  it. 

This  story  also  terminates  in  a  statue,  a  statue  of  Coroe- 
bus killing  "Punishment,"  which  was  placed  on  Coroe- 
bus' tomb  at  Megara,  together  with  some  regrettably 
unquoted  elegiac  verses  relating  to  Psamathe. 

This  statue  Pausanias  says  was  one  of  the  oldest  he 
ever  saw;  and  the  very  great  antiquity  of  the  fountain  of 
Psamathe  may  be  inferred  from  Cephalus'  contempo- 
raneity with  the  Sphinx,  and  from  the  story  of  the  Cor- 
inthian Spring  of  Pirene  which,  in  a  way,  owed  its 
existence  to  .^gina,  who  gave  her  name  to  ^acus'  island 
and  was  the  mother  of  its  owner  and  the  grandmother 
of  Peleus  who  murdered  his  half  brother  Phocus. 

Unfortunately,  there  is  no  clue  to  the  particular  part 
of  Argolis  in  which  this  fountain  appeared,  though  it  is  a 
fair  inference  that  it  was  in  what  was  at  one  time  the 
Argolian  island  ^gina,  for  it  will  be  observed  that  each 
and  all  of  the  three  Psamathes  lived  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
Saronic  Gulf.  That  Gulf  was  so  called  because  it  was 
encircled  with  oaks,  but  the  fame  that  -^Egina  now  enjoys 
is  due  to  her  almond  trees,  whose  fruit  is  the  best  of  the 
kind  produced  in  Greece. 

The  Gulf  today  is  called  after  the  island  which  has 
made  no  change  in  its  name  except  that  of  dropping  its 
old  initial  letter. 

In  the  history  of  the  Spring  of  Eridanus  in  Attica  it  is 
seen  that,  on  another  occasion,  the  unerring  javelin  was 
launched  by  Cephalus  with  tragic  consequences  that  over- 
whelmed him  with  misery. 

Pliny;  IV.  9. 

Ovid;  Meta.  XI.    Fables  5  and  6.    VII.    Fable  6. 

Pausanias;  II.  39. 


EUBCEA 
282 

EUBCEA 

The  island  of  Euboea  bears  about  the  same  relation  to 
the  mainland  of  Greece  at  the  west  of  it,  that  Long  Island 
does  to  its  own  mainland  on  the  north;  and  the  two 
islands  are  similar  in  size,  as  the  Grecian  one,  though  but 
105  miles  long,  is  in  some  places  30  miles  across. 

It  is  the  largest  island  in  the  ^^gean  Sea,  to  which  one 
of  its  towns,  Mg^,  gave  the  name.  It  was  where  brass  was 
first  discovered.  One  of  its  rivers  turned  sheep  black,  and 
another  one  made  them  white,  from  which  it  might  be 
inferred  that  sheep  were  originally  of  some  other  color. 

The  royal  residence  of  Poseidon  was  in  the  deep  part 
of  the  sea  near  Mg^,  and  connected  with  it  were  the 
apartments  containing  his  precious  horses,  with  golden 
manes  and  brazen  hoofs,  which  received  the  personal 
attention  of  himself  or  his  wife  Amphitrite. 

Eubcea  was  supposed  to  have  been  separated  from  the 
mainland  by  an  earthquake,  but  neither  memory  nor 
mythology  ever  went  back  to  the  time  when  it  was  not  an 
island.  It  was  one  in  Deucalion's  day  when  he  and  his 
wife  Pyrrha  lived  in  Cynus  on  the  opposite  continental 
shore;  and  so  it  was,  ages  before,  when  Zeus  loved  lo 
and  gave  her  the  form  of  a  white  cow  to  conceal  from  his 
wife,  Hera,  the  real  object  of  his  affections.  Then  wily 
Hera,  concealing  her  hate  for  lo  with  pretended  fondness 
for  the  heifer,  secured  it  as  a  gift  and  had  it  tied  to  an 

391 


392  GREEK  ISLANDS 

olive  tree  at  Mycense,  appointing,  as  cowherd,  Argus, 
with  whose  hundred  eyes  she  beautified  the  tail  of  her 
favorite  bird  the  peacock,  when  Zeus  had  Argus  slain  and 
released  lo,  whom  Hera  then  persecuted  more  actively, 
goading  the  poor  creature  to  constant  flight  from  one 
country  to  another  with  a  tireless,  stinging  gadfly,  until 
finally,  swimming  through,  and  thence  naming,  the 
Ionian  Sea,  she  reached  the  shore  of  the  island  and  sought 
shelter  in  a  cave  which,  from  that  circumstance,  was 
called  Eu  Bous,  the  Cow's  Stall — a  designation  after- 
wards applied  to  a  city,  and  then  to  the  whole  island;  and 
an  incident  always  recalled  by  the  cow's  head  stamped  on 
the  island's  coinage. 

Superstitious  people  might  perhaps  see  in  this  a  pre- 
monitory sign,  for  Euboea  afterwards  became  a  far-famed 
place  of  resort  for  sufferers,  because  they  found  potent,, 
remedies  for  pains  and  disorders  in  some  of  its  Springs. 

Among  these  was  the  Spring  of  .^depsus. 

Strabo;  X.  i.     §3- 


283 

Spring  of  ^depsus 

This  Spring  was  near  the  town  of  iEdepsus  in  the  north- 
west part  of  the  island. 

It  was  a  cold  Spring  whose  waters  were  taken  inter- 
nally and  were  freely  at  the  disposal  of  anyone  who 
needed  their  benefits — that  is,  they  were  free  until  about 
300  B.C.  when  a  predatory  representative  of  Antigonus, 
seeing  an  opportunity  in  the  great  numbers  of  health- 
seekers,  or,  as  it  is  quaintly  expressed,  wishing  to  be 
economical  in  respect  of  the  water,  placed  a  tax  on  each 
draught — an  impost  that  the  charitable  Spring  promptly 
resented  by  drying  up. 


.ri '/  EUBCEA  393 

A  similar  instance  occurred  in  Troas  when  Lysimachus 
attempted  to  derive  a  revenue  from  users  of  the  water  of 
the  Tragascean  Lake,  which  Lake,  however,  reappeared 
as  soon  as  it  was  announced  that  the  tax  would  be  dis- 
continued. 

Athenseus;  III.  4. 

284 

Hercules'  Springs 

These  were  hot  Springs  by  the  seashore  near  ^depsus, 
and  such  as  sought  their  benefits  used  the  waters  for 
bathing. 

They  had  a  greater  vogue  than  the  cold  Spring,  per- 
haps because  the  patrons  of  the  latter,  after  its  disappear- 
ance increased  the  clientele  of  the  baths. 

These  Springs,  too,  suddenly  went  dry,  not  in  protest 
against  any  impositions,  but  because  of  an  earthquake. 
After  being  dry  for  three  days,  they  reappeared  in  new 
places,  and  they  still  exist  today  near  the  town  of  Lipso 
which  has  taken  the  place  of  -^depsus. 

Their  sulphurous  waters,  ranging  from  90°  to  180°  in 
temperature,  are  still  so  popular  that  their  numerous 
patients  support  three  modern  hotels. 

Pliny  apparently  refers  to  these  Springs  as  "the  warm 
Springs  known  as  Ellopiae, "  that  being  an  ancient  name 
for  Euboea. 

Pliny;  IV.  21. 


285 

Arethusa 

The  Spring  of  Arethusa  was  near  what  was,  ages  ago, 
as  it  is  still,   the  principal  town  of  Euboea — Chalcis 


394  GREEK  ISLANDS 

"which  feedeth  the  far-famed  waters  of  Arethusa  by  the 
sea,"  as  Euripides  praisingly  described  it.  And  it  is 
doubly  remarkable  that  he  made  another  Arethusa 
immortal  by  burial  in  a  town  of  that  name  in  Macedonia; 
and  that  the  town  was  founded  by  people  from  Chalcis 
who  named  it  after  their  own  home  fountain. 

A  better  known  settlement  by  the  Chalcidians  was 
Cumsd,  the  mother  of  Naples,  which,  made  by  Megas- 
thenes  in  1050  B.C.,  was  probably  the  second  colony  that 
went  from  Greece,  if  CEnotrus'  migration  to  Magna  Grse- 
cia  was  the  first. 

Arethusa  heard  the  last  words  of  Aristotle,  who  died  in 
Chalcis  in  August  B.C.,  322,  owing,  it  is  said,  to  the  effect 
of  worry  over  being  unable  to  account  for  the  fourteen 
mysterious  changes  of  the  tide  that  occurred  daily  in  the 
Euripus — the  narrow  strait  before  the  city  where  it  con- 
tracted to  a  channel  only  forty  yards  in  width  and  was 
spanned  by  a  two-piece  bridge  connecting  it  with  the 
mainland. 

Chalcidians  originated  The  Hague  Conference  idea  of 
regulating  the  conduct  of  war,  and  were  the  first  to  make 
agreements  with  others  restricting  the  use  of  the  long- 
range  projectiles  of  those  days — weapons  that  like 
javelins  and  spears  were  thrown  at  enemies. 

The  fountain  was  remarkable  for  the  volimie  of  its 
waters  which  supplied  the  whole  city;  and  it  contained 
nimibers  of  various  kinds  of  fish  so  tame  that  they  fed 
from  the  hand;  among  them  were  eels,  gaily  decorated 
with  earrings  of  silver  and  gold,  that  crowded  about  the 
margin  of  the  Spring  to  receive  fresh  cheese  and  portions 
of  sacrifices  that  the  devout  brought  to  them  from  the 
temples. 

After  an  ancient  earthquake  the  fountain  was  for  a 
time  obstructed,  but  it  forced  for  itself  a  new  opening 


EUBCEA  395 

and  was  still  one  of  the  attractions  of  the  city  in  the 
Hid  century  a.d.,  when  its  tame  fish  and  earringed  eels 
were  described. 

Leake  was  unable  to  find  Arethusa  in  the  1830's,  and 
it  was  supposed  to  have  been  drained  by  chasms  opened 
during  convulsions  of  a  comparatively  late  date;  but  a 
modern  guide  book's  description  of  the  new  iron  bridge 
over  the  Euripus,  with  a  railway  station  at  the  end  of  it, 
and  the  Chalcis  hotels  with  electric  lights  and  private 
baths,  is  supplemented  with  a  notice  of  a  Spring,  a  mile 
south  of  the  city  on  the  road  to  the  seacoast,  which  it 
introduces  as  the  original,  ancient  Arethusa. 

Strabo;  I.  3.5  16. 
Athenaeus;  VIII.  3. 


286 

Lelantum 

In  the  plain  of  Lelantum  there  were  curative  hot 
Springs  that  were  used  by  the  Roman  general  Cornelius 
Sulla. 

The  chief  of  these  was  one  called  the  Eretrian  Fountain 
and  its  waters  were  apparently  used  for  bathing,  as 
Erasistratus  cited  them  as  an  instance  of  the  absurdity  of 
judging  waters  by  their  weight,  saying  that,  while  the 
waters  of  the  Eretrian  Fountain  were  bad,  there  was  ab- 
solutely no  difference  between  their  weight  and  the 
weight  of  the  good  waters  of  the  fountain  of  Amphiaraus, 
which  was  near  Oropus  on  the  opposite  coast. 

There  were  several  versions  of  the  origin  of  the  name  of 
the  Curetes  who  once  lived  in  the  neighborhood  of  these 
Springs,  and  one  of  the  versions  was  intimately  connected 
with  the  Springs,  it  being  to  the  effect  that  the  control  of 
the  plain  and  the  Springs  was  a  constant  source  of  con- 


396  GREEK  ISLANDS 

tention  between  the  Curetes  and  their  neighbors,  the 
latter  being  in  the  habit  of  seizing  the  Curetes  by  the 
forelock  and  dragging  them  about  until  they  were  ex- 
hausted and  lamed  with  bruises. 

To  minimize  their  injuries,  the  victims  cut  off  their 
front  hair ;  but  apparently  their  plan  proved  to  be  only  a 
temporary  respite  from  their  persecutions,  for  they  finally 
moved  away  from  Euboea  and  went  to  .^tolia  where  they 
settled  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  Achelous  River.  It  being 
desirable  to  distinguish  them  from  the  people  on  the 
opposite  bank  of  the  stream,  they  were  called  the  Curetes, 
the  Shorn;  and  the  othersiders  were  named  the  Unshorn, 
the  Acarnanians;  whence  the  country  of  the  latter  be- 
came Acarnania,  a  name  that  the  district  might  never 
have  borne  had  it  not  been  for  the  strife-breeding  Hot 
Springs  of  Lelantum. 

The  city  of  Eretria  was  on  the  coast  and  at  the  south- 
west end  of  the  plain,  in  the  vicinity  of  the  place  now 
called  Vathy. 

Strabo;X.i.     §9. 
Athenaeus;  II.  as* 


TENEDOS 

287 
Tenedos 

In  the  island  of  Tenedos  there  was  a  Spring  that,  after 
the  summer  solstice,  was  full  of  water  from  the  third 
hour  of  the  night  to  the  sixth,  which  was  approximately 
between  9  and  12  p.m.,  as  the  Romans  for  six  hundred 
years,  from  about  150  B.C.,  divided  the  time  between  sun- 
rise and  sunset  into  twelve  hours — the  hours  being  longer 
in  siunmer,  and  shorter  in  winter,  ranging  between  75 
and  45  minutes.  Similarly  they  divided  the  night  into 
twelve  hours,  which  therefore  varied  in  length  as  did  the 
daylight  hours.  Their  First  Hour  in  stmimer  corre- 
sponded to  4.30  A.M.  modern  clock-time;  and  the  same 
hour  in  winter,  to  7.30.  This  made  no  more  difference  in 
the  lives  of  the  Romans  than  the  change  of  hours  in  the 
modern  Daylight  Saving  plan,  but  it  necessitates  a  cal- 
culation whenever  it  is  desired  to  fix  an  ancient  happen- 
ing by  modern  clock-time,  accurately. 

Tenedos  is  seventeen  miles  from  the  entrance  to  the 
Dardanelles  and  was  the  island  the  besiegers  of  Troy 
used  to  conceal  their  fleet  while,  feigning  departure,  they 
awaited  the  outcome  of  the  stratagem  of  the  wooden 
horse. 

Pliny;  II.  io6. 


397 


LESBOS 

288 
Lesbos 

When,  in  a  way,  the  world  was  at  its  wisest  and  its 
wickedest,  a  swarthy  little  woman  with  dark  hair  sat  by 
a  beautiful  Spring  in  a  lovely  little  island  only  eight  miles 
wide,  and  ten  miles  from  the  coast  of  Asia. 

To  her  reflection  in  the  Spring,  as  though  it  were  a 
sympathetic  friend,  she  reviewed  her  many  woes. 

Left  an  orphan  by  the  death  of  her  father  Scaman- 
dronymus  when  she  was  but  six  years  old,  she  was  the 
sister  of  a  pirate,  and  of  two  other  young  men  of  lax 
morality.  She  was  an  aphrodisian  who  had  brought  dis- 
grace upon  herself  in  the  company  of  both  women  and 
men,  and  was  the  mother  of  a  little  daughter,  Cle'is,  six 
years  old,  whom  she  regarded  as  an  encimibrance. 

For  the  moment,  she  was  in  love  with  Phaon,  a  man 
who  had  tired  of  her  and  gone  off  to  the  island  of  Sicily. 

Thinking  over  so  much  of  her  misery  as  is  known  to 
others,  and  maybe  of  more  that  is  still  unknown,  she  was 
suddenly  seized  with  an  impulse  to  throw  herself  from  the 
promontory  of  Leucate,  in  Arcarnania,  which  was  a 
precipitous  rock  called  The  Lover's  Leap  because  those 
who  jumped  from  it  were  cured  of  their  pangs,  whether 
the  leaper  lived  or  whether  he  lost  his  life  in  the  sea. 

This  woebegone  little  woman  was  Sappho,  the  Tenth 
Muse,  the  world's  greatest  lyric  poetess,  and  the 
author  of  nine  books  of  poems,  all  of  which  have  been 

398 


LESBOS  399 

lost  fortunately — or  unfortunately,  according  to  whether 
the  matter  is  regarded  morally  or  metrically. 

Before  starting  on  the  journey  to  the  distant  rock,  she 
wrote  to  Phaon  about  her  thoughts  and  the  impulse  that 
came  to  her  at  the  fountain  which  she  described  as  "a 
sacred  Spring,  limpid,  and  more  pellucid  than  the  glassy 
stream,  and  many  suppose  that  it  harbors  a  divinity; 
over  it  the  lotus,  delighting  in  waters,  spreads  its  branches, 
itself  alone  a  grove;  and  the  earth  is  green  with  the 
springing  turf.  There  I  was  reclining  my  limbs,  wearied 
with  weeping,"  she  says,  when  she  was  seized  with  an 
impiilse  to  throw  herself  from  the  rock. 

The  result  of  the  leap  in  her  case  was  fatal. 

An  alleged  temple  record  which  enumerates  the  leaps 
and  their  causes  for  one  year,  gives  the  case  of  Alcaeus 
the  lyric  poet  who,  being  in  love  with  Sappho,  appeared 
one  afternoon  to  make  the  leap ;  but,  learning  that  Sappho 
had  made  it  earlier  in  the  same  day,  he  sat  down  and 
composed  an  ode  on  the  occasion,  and  then  returned 
home. 

Only  a  few  lines  of  Sappho's  volimiinous  writings  were 
known  up  to  1910,  when  one  of  her  lost  poems  was  an- 
nounced to  have  been  discovered  in  Egypt. 

It  was  to  one  of  Sappho's  brothers,  the  pirate,  that 
Posidippus  referred  in  his  epigram,  on  a  departed  frail 
one,  written  25 1 1  years  before  Kipling ; — 

"Here,  Doricha,  your  bones  have  long  been  laid; 
Here  is  your  hair,  and  your  well-scented  robe, 
You  who  once  loved  the  elegant  Charaxus." 

Doricha  had  been  a  fellow  slave  with  .^sop,  and  the 
fairy  tale  of  Cinderella  was  perhaps  suggested  by  the 
stoy  of  her  sandal,  which  was  to  the  effect  that  while  she 


400  GREEK  ISLANDS 

was  bathing  an  eagle  soared  away  with  it  and  dropped  it 
in  the  lap  of  the  king  at  Memphis.  The  beautiful  shape 
of  the  sandal  aroused  so  much  interest  in  the  king  that 
he  sent  to  all  parts  of  the  country  to  discover  the  owner, 
and  when  she  was  found,  in  the  city  of  Naucratis,  the 
monarch  made  her  his  wife.  Her  tomb  was  the  third 
pyramid,  only  one  tenth  the  size  of  the  others  but  the 
most  costly  of  all  because  it  was  built  in  large  part  of  a 
black  stone,  brought  from  a  great  distance  in  the  moun- 
tains of  Ethiopia,  and,  owing  to  its  hardness,  very 
expensive  to  work. 

The  Spring  was  perhaps  near  Sappho's  home,  either  in 
the  town  of  Eresos,  or  in  that  of  Mitylene,  from  which 
latter  the  island  of  Lesbos  takes  its  modern  name  of 
MeteHn. 

Strabo;  XVII.  i.     J  33. 

Ovid ;  Heroines  Ep.  XV.  (Sappbo'a.) 

Athenxus;  XIII.  69. 


CYDONEA  AND  ANDROS 

289 
Cydonea 

The  island  of  Cydonea  contained  a  warm  Spring  that 
flowed  only  in  the  spring  season. 

Cydonea  was  one  of  the  Leuca3,  a  little  cluster  of  five 
islands  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  island  of  Lesbos,  the 
group  that  is  now  called  the  Aspri  islands. 

Pliny;  V.  39-     H-  106. 


290 

Andros 

There  was  a  fountain  at  Andros  in  the  temple  of 
Dionysus  from  which  wine  flowed  during  the  seven  days 
devoted  to  that  god's  festival  beginning  on  the  fifth  of 
January. 

Andros  was  one  of  the  largest  islands  in  the  group  of 
the  Cyclades,  and  the  one  nearest  to  Euboea  from  which 
it  is  separated  by  a  few  miles  of  water,  and  its  principal 
city  bore  the  same  name. 

Wine  was,  and  still  is  one  of  the  leading  products  of  the 
island;  and  by  a  considerate  dispensation,  that  secured 
the  manufacturers  from  losing  their  occupations,  the 
vinous  stream  of  the  fountain  lost  its  flavor  as  soon  as  it 
was  taken  from  the  temple,  and,  outside  of  it,  had  the 
taste  of  ordinary  water. 

26  401 


402  GREEK  ISLANDS 

A  wine  miracle  of  more  moderate  proportions  took 
place  in  the  temple  of  Dionysus  in  the  town  of  Elis  when 
his  festival  called  the  Thyia  was  celebrated;  then  the 
priests  deposited  three  flagons  in  the  building  in  full 
view  of  all  the  people  present,  and  someone,  whoever 
desired  to,  sealed  the  doors;  and  on  the  next  day,  when 
the  doors  were  opened,  the  flagons  were  found  to  be  full 
of  wine. 

The  fountain  in  Andros  was  also  called  Dios  Theodosia. 

Pliny;  II.  I06. 
Pausanias;  VI.  a6. 


SAMOS 

291 
The  Samian  Spring 

One  of  the  three  greatest  engineering  works  of  the 
Greeks  was  the  tunnel  they  cut  through  the  base  of  Mt. 
Cerecteus,  to  carry  the  waters  of  the  copious  Samian 
Spring  to  the  capital  of  the  Island  of  Samos. 

The  island  was  less  than  100  miles  in  circuit,  but  the 
mountain  was  nearly  5000  feet  high  and  its  spreading 
base  had  to  be  hewn  through  for  a  distance  of  seven 
eighths  of  a  mile.  The  tunnel  was  eight  feet  square  and 
had  a  broad  and  deep  channel  cut  in  the  center  of  its 
floor,  in  which  pipes  were  laid  to  carry  the  water  from  the 
Spring.  Eupalinus,  a  Megarian,  was  the  architect  of  this 
stupendous  work. 

Samos  was  the  birthplace  of  three  celebrated  men 
named  Pythagoras;  the  philosopher,  an  athlete,  and  a 
sculptor.  It  was  also  not  alone  the  birthplace  of  the 
goddess  Hera  but  the  scene  of  her  marriage  to  Zeus. 
The  goddess  was  born  on  the  banks  of  the  Imbrasus 
River  under  the  shade  of  a  shrub  that  continued  to  be 
shown  to  visitors  down  to  the  opening  years  of  the 
Christian  Era. 

The  present  impression  that  the  inhabitants  of  Samos 
are  more  industrious  than  honest  may  have,  as  to  honesty, 
no  more  foundation  than  the  very  old  story,  dating  back 
to  540  B.C.,  that  the  Samians  of  that  time  relieved  them- 
selves from  a  Lacedaemonian  fleet's  siege  by  paying  the 

403 


404  GREEK  ISLANDS 

admiral  a  large  sum  of  spurious  money  made  of  lead,  per- 
fectly stamped  with  the  governm.ent  dies,  and  carefully 
gilded  to  represent  gold. 

The  main  tunnel  leading  to  the  Spring  has  not  yet  been 
clearly  identified,  but  what  seem  to  be  branches  of  it 
have  been  uncovered  near  the  city. 

Samos,  one  of  the  Sporades  group  of  islands,  was  45 
miles  southwest  of  Smyrna,  and  it  retains  its  old  name. 

Herodotus;  III.  60. 


292-293 
GiGARTHO.      LeUCOTHEA 

The  fountains  of  Gigartho  and  Leucothea  were  found 
in  the  Island  of  Samos. 

Pliny;  V.  37. 


CEOS 

294 
,,  .  Carthea 

The  Spring  at  Carthea  inspired  Simonides'  epigram ; — 

"  I  say  that  he  who  does  not  Hke  to  win 
The  grasshopper's  prize,  will  give  a  mighty  feast 
To  the  Panopeiadean  Epeus." 

When  it  was  written,  the  great  lyric  poet  was  teaching 
a  class  in  singing,  at  a  place  near  the  temple  of  Apollo; 
and,  as  there  was  no  water  near  the  school,  the  pupils 
took  turns  in  fetching  it  from  the  Spring,  which  was 
quite  a  distance  away.  An  ass  employed  to  carry  the 
containers  was  called  Epeus,  after  the  son  of  Panopus 
referred  to  in  the  No-Fountain  town  of  that  name, 
because  among  Epeus'  varied  experiences  had  been  that 
of  bearing  water  for  the  Atridae. 

The  epigram  was,  in  fact,  a  law  with  a  laugh  in  it,  like 
a  dose  from  a  glass  with  a  sweet  flavored  rim,  a  poetically 
phrased  rule  that  tardy  pupils  should  be  fined  a  choenix, 
about  two  and  a  half  pints,  of  barley  to  be  fed  to  the  ass. 

The  "grasshopper's  prize"  was  a  prize  for  singing,  as 
the  insect's  music  was  called;  and  the  "mighty  feast" 
was  the  barley. 

Carthea  was  a  town  on  the  southeast  side  of  one  of  the 
Cyclades  islands  called  Ceos,  now  Zia,  in  which  Simonides 
was  born,  and  where  those  who  reached  the  age  of  sixty 

405 


4o6  GREEK  ISLANDS 

years  were  obliged  to  drink  hemlock  and  end  their  lives, 
in  order  that  there  might  be  food  enough  for  those  under 
that  age. 

The  vagaries  of  the  fountain  in  Carthea  indicate  that 
it  was  once  a  Spring  in  Boeotia,  and  was  still  fed  by  rains 
that  fell  on  the  mainland  of  Greece  many  miles  away; 
and  they  explain  one  of  the  causes  of  the  presence  of 
copious  Springs  in  small  islands,  as,  according  to  very 
ancient  tradition,  Ceos  was  originally  a  part  of  Boeotia 
from  which  was  rent  a  portion  that  became  the  large 
island  of  Euboea :  from  the  latter  there  was  torn  away  a 
piece  sixty  miles  long  that  became  the  island  of  Ceos; 
and  from  this  last  a  fifty  mile  stretch  disappeared  in  the 
sea  leaving  Ceos,  as  at  present,  only  some  twelve  miles 
in  length. 

The  town  of  the  fountain  is  now  called  Stais  Palais. 

Ceos  is  sometimes  confounded  with  Chios,  an  island, 
in  the  .^gean  Sea  near  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  that 
claimed  to  have  been  the  birthplace  of  Homer  whose 
schoolhouse  the  natives  fondly  preserved. 

Athenaus;  X.  84.     Pliny;  IV.  20. 


lULIS 

The  fountain  of  lulls  gave  its  name  to  one  of  the  four 
cities  that  the  island  of  Ceos  once  possessed,  though  two 
of  them  had  gone  to  decay  before  Strabo  wrote  about 
them  in  the  1st  century  B.C. 

lulis,  the  town  in  which  Simonides  was  born,  was  in 
the  northern  part  of  the  Island,  and  the  fountain  was 
about  three  miles  from  the  sea. 

If  science  is  indebted  to  the  fountain  of  Arethusa  for 


CEOS  407 

the  law  of  specific  gravity,  the  world  at  large  may  per- 
haps be  still  more  greatly  obligated  to  the  fountain  of 
lulls,  on  whose  changing  surface,  rippled  by  its  unceasing 
upward  flow,  Simonides  may  have  descried  the  outlines 
of  the  four  letters  with  which  he  completed  the  alphabet, 
by  adding  E,  O,  Ps  and  Z  to  Cadmus'  16  and  Palamedes' 
4  characters. 

There  is  now  only  one  town  left,  the  modern  Zea,  which 
is  located  where  stood  lulls  of  which  there  are  some  re- 
mains; and  of  these  the  most  important  is  a  colossal 
figure  of  a  lion  twenty  feet  long  which  stands  where  the 
fountain  still  gushes  forth. 

The  animal  is  supposed  to  represent  a  character  in  one 
of  the  island's  earliest  legends  which  states  that  the 
original  inhabitants  were  frightened  away  by  a  lion,  and 
convincement  of  the  legend's  verity  is  forced  by  the 
animal's  size,  which  is  sufficient  to  have  terrified  stouter 
hearted  beings  than  the  gentle  nymphs  who  were  said  to 
have  been  the  original  inhabitants. 

Heraclides;  Pol.  c.  9. 
Pliny;  VII.  57. 


296 

Cea 

It  was  said  that  the  waters  of  a  certain  Spring  in  the 
island  of  Cea  dulled  the  senses.  Cea  is  another  form  for 
Ceos,  but  the  vagueness  of  the  statement  has  given  no 
assistance  in  locating  this  injurious  fountain. 

The  Spring  is  mentioned  as  a  foil  to  the  River  Nus,  in 
Cilicia,  which  sharpened  the  intellect.  If  the  Cydnus  is 
the  river  thus  referred  to,  the  allusion  is  perhaps  to  its 
having  quickened  Alexander's  wits  to  the  danger  of  plung- 
ing into  cold  water  when  the  body  is  overheated,  for, 


4o8  GREEK  ISLANDS 

having,  when  in  that  condition,  bathed  in  the  Cydnus, 
which  was  a  snow-fed  and  extremely  cold  stream,  Alexan- 
der received  a  congestive  chill  that  was  followed  by  a 
violent  illness.     (See  No.  277). 

.    Pliny;  XXXI.  13. 


TENOS 

297 
Tenos 

The  fountain  of  Tenos  was  in  the  island  of  that  name 
which  was  a  unit  of  the  Cyclades  group  and  a  mile  away 
from  the  isle  of  Andros. 

Tenos  was  first  named  Hydrussa  because  of  the  num- 
ber of  Springs  that  it  contained,  but  the  fountain  in  ques- 
tion was  the  most  noted  of  them  all,  owing  to  the  peculiar 
fact  that  its  water  would  not  mix  with  wine. 

Another  name  of  the  island  was  Ophiussa,  given  it 
because  of  the  nimiber  of  snakes  that  were  to  be  seen 
there.  It  had  a  temple  containing  large  banqueting 
rooms  to  which  multitudes  of  people  resorted  from 
neighboring  places,  to  celebrate  feasts  and  perform  a 
sacrifice  to  Neptune. 

S.  Nicholas,  the  present  capital  of  the  island,  occupies 
the  site  of  one  of  the  towns  anciently  called  Tenos. 

Tino  is  the  island's  modern  name. 

Athenaeus;  II.  i8.     Pliny;  IV.  22. 


409 


DELOS 

298 
Delos 

A  small  particle,  now  here  now  there,  a  will-o'-the- 
wisp  of  land,  floated  at  the  will  of  the  winds  in  the  ^gean 
sea. 

At  the  same  time  Latona,  soon  to  become  the  mother 
of  Apollo,  wandered  wearily  about,  unable  to  decide 
upon  his  native  land. 

Strangely  enough,  Apollo  himself  made  the  decision 
and  advised  her  to  select  the  floating  island;  which  she 
accordingly  did. 

The  island,  which  drifted  aimlessly  like  an  asphodel 
stalk,  now  carried  by  the  currents,  now  driven  by  the 
gales,  had  a  remarkably  fine,  circular  Spring  with  a  width 
of  thirty  feet,  the  overflow  from  which  wandered  moisten- 
ingly  through  the  island,  as  the  island  roamed  through 
the  ocean,  and  finally,  known  as  the  River  Inopus,  slipped 
into  the  sea ;  sometimes  it  was  called  the  Egyptian  River, 
for  it  was  evidently  a  part  of  the  Nile  as  the  two  streams 
waxed  and  waned  in  volume  at  exactly  the  same  period 
of  the  year. 

The  island  was  noted  for  its  numerous  palm  trees,  and 
at  the  side  of  the  Spring,  under  one  of  these  that  became 
a  part  of  a  peculiar  ceremony  performed  for  centuries 
afterwards,  Apollo  was  born,  on  a  day  in  May,  that  is,  on 
the  7th  of  the  month  Thargelion,  a  day  not  even  yet 
forgotten,  for  Sunday  still  is  the  Sun-God's  day.    Seven 

410 


DELOS  411 

times,  too,  on  that  day  did  the  well-advised  swans  from 
far  away  Pactolus  circle  around  the  island,  soothing  the 
goddess  meanwhile  with  the  melody  of  their  tuneful 
throats — and  it  was  in  memory  of  that  sevenfold  round  of 
song  that  Apollo  gave  the  lyre  its  seven  strings. 

Afterwards  the  people,  too,  in  a  semi-religious  way, 
perpetuated  the  events  of  that  day  and,  as  a  forerunner 
of  the  fun  those  who  first  cross  the  equator  are  forced  to 
make,  every  new  voyager  to  Delos,  among  other  cere- 
monies, was  bidden  to  bite  the  bark  of  Latona's  holy  tree 
by  the  Spring  side,  and  to  circle  the  altar,  as  the  singing 
swans  circled  the  island. 

With  the  birth  of  the  god,  the  roaming  island  re- 
formed; it  settled  and  became  fixed  as  the  smallest 
islet  of  the  Cyclades,  and,  discarding  Asteria,  Cynthus, 
Ortygia  and  other  appellations  it  had  received  in  its 
travels,  it  assumed  the  name  Delos  (Known),  as  from 
that  time  its  whereabouts  ceased  to  be  a  matter  of 
conjecture  and  a  menace  to  nervous  navigators,  who 
no  longer  sailed  in  constant  dread  of  running  afoul  of 
it,  leagues  away  from  the  spot  where  it  had  last  been 
reported. 

The  steadfast  island  soon  attracted  the  attention  of 
human  settlers,  of  whom  a  party  of  lonians  are  supposed 
to  have  begun  the  building  of  its  first  town  near  the 
Spring;  and,  from  having  been  called  the  Refuse  of  the 
Sea,  the  land  became  a  place  of  note  and  veneration  which 
no  merchandising  mariner  would  think  of  passing  with- 
out a  visit. 

Thus  its  traffic  became  enormous,  and,  in  its  Slave 
Mart  alone,  ten  thousand  vassals  were  bought  and  sold 
in  a  single  day. 

Because  of  Apollo's  birth,  the  place  became  no  less 
renowned  religiously  than  it  was  in  commercial  matters, 


412  GREEK  ISLANDS 

for  its  temple  and  its  periodic  festival  attracted  addi- 
tional crowds  of  foreigners  to  whom  Greed  and  Gain 
might  have  beckoned  without  response. 

Embassies  arrived  every  year  in  such  large  delegations 
that  a  special  and  sacred  ship  was  employed  for  their 
transportation ;  and  presents  and  offerings  were  sent  from 
countries  so  distant  that  the  packages  were  relayed, 
from  one  nation  to  another  at  their  frontiers,  until  in  the 
lapse  of  time  they  arrived  at  Delos. 

The  ambassadorial  ship  was  the  "Theoris,"  the  same 
vessel  in  which  Theseus  sailed  to  Crete  to  slay  the 
Minotaur,  and  in  which  he  carried  off  Ariadne  on  his 
return. 

As  early  as  426  B.C.,  the  island  was  purified  by  the 
Athenians;  all  tombs  were  removed,  and  stringent  meas- 
ures were  taken  to  make  it  invitingly  healthy ;  not  only 
was  the  departure  of  all  sick  people  made  compulsory, 
but  even  births  were  prohibited,  so  that  the  death  rate 
for  some  time  became  absolutely  nil. 

The  island  was  only  a  few  miles  in  circumference  and 
its  city,  Delos,  lay  about  the  base  of  a  450-foot  high 
granite  crag  that  was  named  Mt.  Cynthus,  after  which 
Apollo's  twin  sister  Diana  is  sometimes  called. 

The  city  was  respected  by  pillaging  heroes  of  several 
eras,  but  was  laid  waste  in  the  Mithridatic  war,  and  then 
steadily  crumbled  away  until,  now,  only  traces  remain  of 
its  large  temple  and  its  enormous  statue  of  the  god  who 
made  it  great  by  selecting  it  to  be  his  birthplace;  for, 
several  centuries  ago,  shipfuls  of  rescued  fragments  of  its 
beautiful  architecture  were  carried  away  to  adorn  sur- 
rounding cities  on  the  mainland,  from  Constantinople  to 
Venice. 

It  is  now  called  Dili,  and  its  few  inhabitants  are  raisers 
of  sheep  and  goats;  but  its  immemorial  Spring  still  flows, 


DELOS  413 

no  less  clear  and  amply  than  it  did  before  men  came  and 
went;  their  sole  effect  upon  it  being  shown  in  a  small 
segment  of  artificial  wall  which  they  added  to  its  original 
semi-rim  of  native  rock. 

Theog^nis;  Maxims.  Line  6. 
Callimachus;  Hymn  to  Delos. 


COS 

299 

BURINNA 

The  fountain  of  Burinna  was  made  to  issue  from  a  rock 
by  Chalcon  a  son  of  Clytia,  the  daughter  of  Merops,  a 
queen  of  the  island  of  Cos. 

Chalcon  planted  his  knee  strongly  against  the  rock 
and  made  an  opening  for  the  water  with  his  foot. 

Poplars  and  elms  growing  beside  the  rock  shaded  the 
fountain  with  waving  green  foliage,  in  whose  cool  shelter 
fire-colored  cicalas  worked  and  chirped  while  thrushes 
in  the  thorn  bushes  warbled,  and  tufted  larks  and  golden 
finches  sang  to  the  cooing  of  turtle  doves  and  the  hum  of 
tawny  bees  over  beds  of  abundant  flowers. 

Those  who  reclined  to  rest  in  the  musical  shade 
breathed  the  incense  of  fruit  time  when  the  summer  air 
was  filled  with  odors  from  myriads  of  apple,  pear  and 
damson  censers  suspended  from  heavy-laden,  low- droop- 
ing boughs,  that  acolyte-like  breezes  swung  to  and  fro. 
And  if  the  resters  tarried  while  the  waters  of  the  Spring 
were  cooling  wine  the  years  had  aged,  the  mellow  notes  of 
Lycidas  the  goatherd  might  reach  them,  and  perhaps  the 
words  of  his  pastoral  recounting  the  worship  Comatus 
the  herdsman  accorded  the  Muses,  and  how  they  pre- 
served him  when  shut  in  a  chest  by  his  master,  so  that 
after  three  months  Comatus  was  found  none  the  worse, 
and  surrounded  with  honeycombs  built  by  the  bees  the 
Muses  had  sent  to  supply  him  with  nourishment. 

414 


COS  415 

Cos  was  an  island  in  the  Myrtoan  Sea  near  Cnidus,  and 
was  the  birthplace  of  Apelles  the  painter,  and  of  the 
physician  Hippocrates,  the  Father  of  Medicine,  who  was 
bom  in  460  B.C.,  on  the  26th  day  of  Agrianus,  possibly 
July;  he  became  one  of  the  world's  oldest  men,  reaching 
the  age  of  109  years, — and  it  may  be  noted  as  a  curiosity 
of  literature  that  he  was  the  author  of  the  apothegm. 
Life  is  short  and  Art  is  long, 

Cos,  however,  was  more  popularly  known  through  its 
Coan  cloth,  a  silk  gauze  which  was  first  made  by  Pam- 
phila  and  soon  acquired  a  vogue  among  well-formed 
women  on  account  of  its  glass-like  transparency. 

The  island  was  also  known  as  the  home  of  the  light- 
weight poet  Philetus  who  is  said  to  have  had  to  put  lead 
in  his  shoes  on  windy  days  in  order  to  maintain  his 
balance. 

Theocritus;  Idyll  VII.  line  i. 


NISYRUS 
■"'^^  300 

NlSYRUS 

The  Hot  Springs  of  Nisyrus  were  at  the  northwest  of 
the  island  of  the  same  name,  and  they  are  still  to  be  found 
about  half  a  mile  from  the  town  which  bears  the  name  of 
the  Springs. 

The  island  became  one  of  the  Sporades,  and  it  produced 
porphyry  and  millstones,  and  manufactured  wine. 

The  island  was  the  result  of  an  incident  that  occurred 
during  the  war  between  the  gods  and  the  giants.  When 
the  ranks  of  the  human  monsters  were  broken  and  they 
sought  safety  in  flight,  Polybotes  was  the  one  that  Posei- 
don pursued,  and  when  he  waded  into  the  sea  the  god 
with  a  stroke  of  his  trident  broke  off  a  fragment  from  the 
island  of  Cos  and  hurled  it  at  the  fugitive,  with  such 
accurate  aim  that  he  fell  and  was  pinned  under  the  rock. 
That  was  the  origin  of  the  island,  and  presumably  Poly- 
botes made  many  attempts  to  shake  off  his  burden,  for 
Nisyrus  was  subject  to  frequent  earthquakes.  Outside 
of  its  geographical  interest,  the  feat  was  worthy  of  record 
as  the  missile  fragment  is  more  than  seven  miles  from  Cos, 
and  is  ten  miles  in  circumference  and  nearly  half  a  mile 
thick.  According  to  old  reports  and  pictures,  Poseidon 
was  on  horseback  when  he  pursued  the  giant. 

Strabo;X.  s-    §16. 


416 


CRETE  9 

301 

GORTYNA 

There  was  a  fountain  by  the  banks  of  the  River  Lithseus, 
at  Gortyna  in  Crete,  which  served  to  identify  the  nearest 
plane  tree  as  being  the  one  celebrated  in  Greek  annals  as 
that  under  which  Zeus  and  Europa  held  their  love  con- 
ferences. T 

That  particular  tree  retained  its  leaves  throughout  the 
year.  Slips  from  it  were  planted  in  different  parts  of  the 
island  from  the  earliest  times,  and,  later,  one  was  reared 
in  Italy  by  Marcellus  ^Eserninus,  during  the  reign  of  the 
Emperor  Claudius. 

The  genuineness  of  reproductions  was  manifested  by 
their  retaining  their  original  leaves,  a  characteristic  with 
which  Europa  perhaps  found  no  fault,  although  it  came 
to  be  considered  an  imperfection,  as  the  warmth  of  the 
winter  sun  was  thereby  shut  off. 

One  of  the  places  that  have  been  suggested  as  the  site 
of  Gortyna  is  near  the  town  now  called  Haghius  Dheka; 
and  a  cavern  in  the  neighborhood  is  considered  to  be 
the  labyrinth  through  the  intricate  windings  of  which 
Theseus  found  his  way,  by  following  Ariadne's  thread, 
after  he  had  killed  Minos'  stepson  Minotaur. 

Minos  himself  had  none  of  the  bovine  characteristics 

that  his  great-grandparents  Zeus  and  Europa  exhibited 

for  a  time;  but  he  became  connected,  through  his  wife 

Pasiphag,  with  two  beings  that  were  bovine  in  part  or  in 

27  417 


4i8  GREEK  ISLANDS 

whole,  her  son  Minotaur  who  had  the  body  of  a  man 
and  the  head  of  a  bull,  and  Minotaur's  father,  who  had 
no  human  physical  characteristics. 

Theseus  killed  the  Minotaur  to  relieve  Athens  from 
contributing  to  the  composite  brute's  keep  by  sending 
every  year  seven  youths  and  seven  maidens  for  the 
monster's  manger.  The  contribution  was  levied  by 
King  Minos  as  a  punishment  for  the  killing  of  his  son 
Androgeus  who,  having  outpointed  all  the  Athenian 
athletes,  was  assassinated  by  some  of  those  he  had 
vanquished. 

Crete  is  now  called  Candia  and,  with  a  spread  of  i6o 
miles,  is  the  longest  island  in  the  Mediterranean  east  of 
Italy:  it  lies  near  the  intersection  of  the  25th  Meridian 
and  the  35th  parallel  of  latitude. 

Three  towns,  of  any  size,  are  all  that  remain  of  nearly 
a  hundred  cities  that  Homer  knew ;  but  all  of  the  domes- 
tic goats  in  the  world  today  are  believed  to  have  sprung 
from  a  Cretan  ancestor,  perhaps  the  one  named  Amal- 
thea  that  supplied  the  milk  that  nourished  Zeus  in  his 
infant  days.     (See  No.  83.) 

The  island  still  abounds  in  Springs,  some  of  which 
appear  even  at  the  side  of  the  sea. 

Theophrastus;  Hist,  of  Plants,  III.  3.    S  4. 


302 

Sauros 

The  fountain  of  Sauros  was  near  Gortyna. 

It  was  surrounded  by  a  grove  of  black  poplar  trees 
which  had  a  peculiarity  of  their  own  that  made  them 
as  noteworthy  as  the  evergreen  plane  tree  that 
shaded  Europa  on  the  banks  of  the  Lithaeus  River; 


CRETE  419 

this  peculiarity  was  a  fruit  that  they  produced,  the 
general  belief  being  that  this  kind  of  tree  was  ordinarily 
fruitless. 

Other  parts  of  the  trees  were  useful  in  medical  practice ; 
— the  seeds,  taken  in  vinegar,  for  epilepsy;  the  resin  for 
making  emollient  plasters;  the  leaves,  boiled  in  vinegar, 
for  gout;  and  the  moisture  from  the  clefts  of  the  trees, 
for  removing  warts  and  pimples. 

The  Spring  was  called  The  Lizard's  Spring  on  occa- 
sions ;  it  was  twelve  furlongs  from  the  mouth  of  a  cave  on 
Mt.  Ida,  and  every  cavern  on  that  mountain  has  perhaps 
been  associated  with  Zeus'  birth. 

Theophrastus;  III.  3-     §4- 


Ceres'  Spring 

"Not  from  every  river  do  the  Melissae  carry  water  for 
Ceres ;  but  a  small  fount  from  a  sacred  Spring  which  rills 
pure  and  unpolluted,  the  choicest  of  its  kind,  from  this 
they  draw." 

Melissa  was  a  daughter  of  Melisseus,  a  king  of  Crete; 
she  was  one  of  the  nurses  who  brought  up  Zeus,  and 
possibly  the  nymph  who  discovered  honey  and  made 
bees  the  symbols  of  the  nymphs,  and  the  Melissae  one  of 
their  designations. 

The  designation  was  afterwards  transferred  to  priest- 
esses in  general,  and  particularly  to  those  of  Demeter  or 
Ceres. 

From  Melissa's  birthplace,  one  might  be  disposed  to 
look  in  Crete  for  the  small  sacred  Spring;  but  it  seems 
more  likely  that  the  passage  is  only  a  poetical  form  ex- 
pressing the  idea  that  the  priestesses  of  Ceres,  wherever 


420  GREEK  ISLANDS 

their  offices  might  be  performed,  drew  their  water  from 
the  Spring  that  was  the  choicest  of  its  kind  in  that  locahty , 
and  that  the  reference  is  not  to  any  one  particular  Spring 
that  can  be  located  in  Crete  or  elsewhere. 

Callimachus;  Hymn  to  Apollo,  lin«  107. 


FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

AFRICA 

304 
Springs  of  Africa 

Africa,  as  the  Libya  of  the  ancients,  did  not  reach  to 
the  equator  the  heats  of  which  were  supposed  to  make  its 
neighborhood  impassable. 

The  divisions  of  it  that  lay  along  the  Mediterranean 
may  be  marked  approximately  on  a  modern  map  by  the 
meridians  of  5,  9  and  26  degrees,  as  Mauritania,  Numi- 
dia  and  Cyrenaica ;  with  Ethiopia  below  them  and  Egypt ; 
Egypt  running  from  meridian  26  to  34  and  down  to  23 
degrees  N.  Lat.  was  not  a  part  of  Libya  any  more  than 
was  Arabia  which  extended  east  of  meridian  34. 

The  earliest  travelers  quoted  in  works  still  extant, 
when  giving  accounts  of  Africa,  from  the  west  beyond 
Egypt  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  did  little  more  than  men- 
tion the  existence  of  the  Springs  that  were  there  seen. 
The  travelers  were  perhaps  obsessed  and  awed  by  the 
human  wonders  that  surrounded  them,  and  the  remark- 
able physical  characteristics  of  the  people  who  inhabited 
the  country  no  doubt  engrossed  their  attention  and  ex- 
hausted their  powers  of  description;  for  the  annotating 
traveler  of  antiquity  seldom  passed  a  Spring  impassively. 
A  Spring  was  one  of  the  great  mysteries  of  nature  in  those 
days  when  even  learned  men  knew  less  of  chemistry  and 

421 


422  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

physics  than  a  modern  school  girl.  The  marvel  was, 
that  water  which  everywhere  else  tended  to  fall  should 
in  a  Spring  force  a  vertical  passage  for  itself,  and  bubble 
upward  in  a  violent  effort  to  travel  in  a  direction  that 
other  waters  refused  to  follow.  A  grazing  lion,  or  a  lamb 
snarling  over  a  feast  of  raw  flesh  would  have  caused  no 
greater  surprise  than  the  Spring's  abnormal  action. 

Apes,  gorillas  and  baboons,  seen  at  a  distance  fleetingly 
and  uncertainly,  and  the  exaggerating  propensities  of 
the  native  Negroes  and  Moors  in  giving  imaginary  par- 
ticulars about  them  and  about  distant  tribes,  may  easily 
account  for  a  large  part  of  the  incredible  in  the  records ; 
records  not  likely  to  be  questioned  by  those  familiar 
with  the  histories  of  the  Gorgons,  the  Hesperides  and 
the  adventures  of  Hercules  in  Libya;  histories  that  had 
come  down  to  them  as  gospel  from  prior  ages ;  histories  of 
monstrosities  that  might  have  made  Homer's  foresight 
seem  to  some  as  astonishing  as  the  later  Leverrier's  in 
locating  the  unseen  planet  Neptune  at  the  exact  spot  in 
the  sky  where  it  was  found  in  1 846. 

The  apparent  plagiarism  of  those  who  traveled  in  the 
East  in  ante-Christian  years  may  no  doubt  be  accounted 
for  in  some  measure  by  the  many  africanoid  animals  that 
India  produces. 

The  monstrous  forms  of  the  animals  and  the  supposed 
men  were  readily  attributed  to  heat,  whose  power  of 
melting  and  changing  could,  as  everyone  knew,  alter  the 
shape  of  even  the  metals. 

These  effects  were  shown  in  various  ways  in  the  peoples' 
faces,  producing  some  without  noses;  or,  without  upper 
lips ;  or  without  tongues. 

One  tribe  had  neither  mouth  nor  nostrils,  but  had  a 
small  hole  somewhere  through  which  they  breathed;  and 
sucked,  through  an  oat  straw,  their  drink  and  food. 


AFRICA  423 

The  Sesambri  district  was  earless;  the  people  and  the 
quadrupeds,  even  the  elephants,  were  earless. 

The  king  of  the  Nigroae  was  like  the  Arimaspi  who  had 
only  one  eye,  which  was  in  the  middle  of  the  forehead; 
they  were  in  continual  warfare  with  Eastern  monsters 
called  Griffins,  beasts,  that  were  like  lions  with  the  wings 
and  the  mouth  of  an  eagle. 

The  Monocoli  had  only  one  leg;  but  they  leaped  with 
surprising  agility,  and  held  the  foot  over  themselves  as  an 
umbrella  when  they  lay  in  the  sun.  Next  to  them  lived 
a  tribe  without  necks,  their  eyes  being  set  in  the  shoulders. 

The  feet  of  the  inhabitants  of  Abarimon,  like  those  of 
Mt.  Nulo,  were  turned  backwards;  but  no  specimen  was 
offered  in  proof,  because  they  could  not  breathe  outside 
of  their  native  country. 

The  Artabatitae  had  four  feet ;  they  inhabited  what  is 
now  Nubia  on  the  frontier  of  Mauritania. 

There  were  men  with  tails;  and  others  with  ears  that 
served  also  as  cloaks  and  covered  the  whole  body. 

There  were  women  whose  bodies  were  covered  with 
hair,  as  was  proved  by  the  skins  of  two  of  them  which 
were  exhibited  in  the  temple  of  Juno  at  Carthage. 

The  Pigmies  were  mortal  enemies  to  the  cranes;  the 
little  people  were  about  two  feet  high,  and  their  cavalry 
corps,  armed  with  bows  and  arrows  and  mounted  on 
goats,  hunted  the  cranes  and  their  eggs.  It  has  been 
suggested  that  the  Pigmies  were  only  the  cat-size  Bar- 
bary  apes  that  still  retain  their  fondness  for  eggs.  But 
these  apes  are  surrounded  with  modern  mysteries  no  less 
interesting  than  those  of  the  Pigmies  and  their  unique 
cavalry;  for  they  are  the  only  monkeys  of  Europe  and 
are  found  only  at  Gibraltar,  to  which  they  are  said  to 
have  come,  from  Africa,  through  a  tunnel  that  may  still 
be  open  under  the  straits. 


424  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

These  little  apes  are  carefully  protected  and  a  severe 
penalty  is  imposed  for  killing  one  of  them,  because  the 
government  knows  the  tradition,  so  say  the  natives,  that 
when  none  of  the  animals  are  left  the  British  will  lose 
possession  of  the  rock. 

Some  other  races  were  twelve  feet  tall. 

The  Maerobili,  like  the  Cyrni  of  India,  lived  400  years 
in  the  heats  of  Ethiopia;  but  the  Calingas  lived  only 
eight  years,  becoming  parents  at  the  age  of  five. 

The  Sauromatse  eat  only  two  or  three  times  a  week. 
The  Androgyni  were  hermaphrodites. 

Some  had  no  language  and  expressed  themselves  in 
pantomime. 

The  Ptoenphse  selected  a  dog  for  their  king,  and  under- 
stood his  edicts  from  the  movements  he  made ;  while  all 
of  the  Cynamolgi  were  dog-headed,  and  perhaps,  like  the 
120,000  men  near  Mt.  Nulo,  who  were  also  dog-headed, 
barked  instead  of  speaking. 

Among  animals,  the  Satyrs  had  human  faces,  and 
walked  either  on  four  feet  or  erect;  though  they  were 
probably  looked  down  upon  by  the  breed  of  horses  that 
possessed  wings  and  horns. 

The  Crocotta  could  break  anything  with  its  teeth,  and 
digest  everything  as  soon  as  swallowed.  A  still  more 
peculiar  animal  was  the  Leucrocotta :  it  was  the  size  of  a 
wild  ass,  but  had  the  legs  of  a  stag;  the  neck,  tail  and 
breast  of  a  lion;  the  head  of  a  badger;  a  cloven  foot;  a 
mouth  slit  up  as  far  as  the  ears ;  and  one  continuous  bone 
instead  of  teeth.  It  ran  with  incredible  swiftness — and 
could  imitate  the  human  voice. 

The  Mantichora,  an  animal  of  the  color  of  blood,  found 
among  the  Ethiopians,  had  a  triple  row  of  teeth ;  the  face 
and  ears  of  a  man;  azure  eyes;  the  body  of  a  lion,  and  a 
tail  ending  in  a  sting  like  a  scorpion's.     It  was  also  ex- 


AFRICA  425 

ceedingly  swift ;  its  voice  resembled  the  sound  of  the  flute 
and  the  trumpet  united — and  it  doted  on  human  flesh. 

The  Monoceros  had  a  stag's  head,  an  elephant's  feet, 
the  tail  of  a  boar  and  the  body  of  a  horse.  A  single  black 
horn  a  yard  long  grew  out  of  the  middle  of  its  forehead. 
This  strange  animal  made  a  deep  lowing  noise,  and  could 
not  be  taken  alive. 

Among  the  Springs  of  the  travelers  who  perhaps  in 
perfect  good  faith  reported  the  strange  people  and  ani- 
mals, were  the  fountain  of  Nigris  and  the  Serpent  Spring. 

Pliny;  VIII.  30. 


305 

The  Fountain  of  Nigris 

One  record  says  that  the  fountain  of  Nigris  was  among 
the  Hesperian  Ethiopians,  and  immediately  goes  on  to 
describe  the  Catoblepas  that  was  found  near  the  fountain ; 
a  wild  beast  of  moderate  size  and  sluggish  movement, 
but  with  a  head  so  heavy  that  it  was  forced  to  carry  it 
always  bent  down  towards  the  earth — which  was  re- 
garded as  a  most  fortunate  circumstance  for  the  human 
race,  as  all  who  beheld  its  eyes  fell  dead  upon  the  spot. 

In  addition  to  the  same  power  which  lay  in  the  eyes 
of  the  Basilisk,  the  latter,  a  serpent  only  twelve  fingers 
long,  had  so  active  a  poison  that  the  venom  ran  up  the 
spear  of  any  horseman  who  impaled  it,  and  killed  both 
the  rider  and  the  horse. 

The  Amphisbaena  had  a  less  potent  poison,  but  was 
compensated  with  a  larger  quantity;  it  had  two  heads, 
the  second  one  at  the  tail,  as  though  one  mouth  were  too 
little  for  the  discharge  of  all  of  its  venom. 

Pliny;  VIII.  32. 


426  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

306 
The  Serpent  Spring 

The  Serpent  Spring  was  a  single  fountain  in  a  district 
of  intense  heat,  but  such  a  multitude  of  snakes  swarmed 
about  it  that  the  spot  could  hardly  contain  them,  and  it 
was  both  difficult  and  dangerous  to  approach  the  water. 

There  were  Sepses  whose  bite  caused  the  body,  bones 
and  all,  to  dissolve  as  snow  is  melted  by  the  sun.  And 
in  the  water  itself  lay  Dipsas,  whose  sting  induced  a 
lethal  thirst  that  drove  the  victims  to  open  their  veins 
and  drink  their  own  blood. 

These  serpents  had  been  generated  from  the  blood  of 
the  one-eyed  Gorgon  Medusa  whose  look  turned  every- 
thing into  stone,  as  Atlas  even  now  bears  witness,  for 
that  rocky  mountain  still  rising  above  the  clouds  is  the 
giant  of  old  who  continues  to  hold  up  the  heavens  as  he 
was  doing  when  petrified  by  Medusa's  glance.  Perseus 
while  cutting  off  her  head  used  his  burnished  shield  as  a 
mirror  to  direct  his  sword  strokes  and  save  himself  from 
the  consequences  of  an  eye  to  eye  view.  Coral  owes  its 
formation  to  the  change  made  in  some  seaweed  by  the 
petrifying  properties  of  the  head  which  Perseus  laid 
upon  it  for  a  short  time;  and  a  part  of  the  blood  pro- 
duced the  team  of  flying  horses,  Pegasus  and  his  brother 
Chrysaor. 

The  neighborhood  of  this  fountain  was  inhabited  by  the 
Psylli;  they  were  serpent  proof  and  they  knew  how  to 
cure  others  who  were  stung.  They  had  a  variety  of  the 
African  odor  that  was  at  least  useful  inasmuch  as  the 
scent  of  it  made  the  snakes  flee  in  horror.  The  Psylli, 
perhaps  rendered  over  confident  by  their  power  of  putting 
serpents  to  flight,  undertook  to  drive  away  the  south  wind 
because  it  had  dried  up  their  water  or  filled  up  their 


AFRICA  427 

watering  places  with  sand,  and  gathering  their  forces  they 
salHed  out  into  the  desert  to  frighten  the  wind  which, 
however,  met  the  onslaught  with  such  mighty  blows  that 
the  Psylli  were  overwhelmed  and  buried  in  the  sands. 
Their  depopulated  territory  then  passed  into  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Nasamones. 

This  Spring  was  beyond  the  Syrtes,  somewhere  south 
of  Tripolis. 

Lucan;  Pharsalia.  IX.  line  605. 
Ovid;  Meta.  IV.      Fable  10. 
Pliny;  VII.  a.     VIII.  35- 


Springs  of  the  Sandhills 

The  Springs  of  the  sandhills  appeared  at  intervals  of 
from  ten-  to  thirty-day  journeys  across  that  part  of  the 
African  continent  between  the  western  border  of  Egypt 
and  the  eastern  limits  of  the  present  Morocco,  within 
which  latter  limits  was  the  region  of  Atlas  where  he  lifted 
his  head,  not  as  formerly  reported  to  the  neighborhood 
of  the  moon,  but  still  to  the  respectable  mountain-height 
of  13,000  feet. 

The  large  tract  of  the  continent  thrusting  itself  out  far 
beyond  the  British  isles,  as  South  America  bulges  out 
eastward  beyond  New  Foundland,  was  not  concerned 
with  the  Sandhills;  the  latter  were  in  a  stretch  of  the 
desert  which  was  separated  from  the  fertile  tract  along 
the  northern  coast  by  an  intermediate  strip  called  the 
Country  of  Wild  Beasts,  the  three  strips  undulating 
across  the  continent  like  stripes  of  a  monster  banner 
spread  over  the  ground. 

The  sandhills  were  strewn  with  large  lumps  of  salt  in 
white    and    purplish    blocks    with    which    the    natives 


428  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

fashioned  their  dwelHngs;  and  from  the  tops  of  these 
hills  the  Springs  gushed  up,  cold  and  sweet.  Between 
the  recurrent  Springs  stretched  the  desert,  dry  and 
scorched. 

The  following  five  Springs  of  the  Sandhills  were  men- 
tioned, in  addition  to  the  fountain  of  Ammon ; — Springs 
of  Augila,  Garamantes,  Debris,  Atarantes  and  Atlantes. 

Herodotus;  IV.  181. 


308 

Springs  of  Augila 

Their  neighborhood  produced  dates  in  great  numbers 
and  of  a  large  size.  In  summer  the  Nasamones  lived 
around  these  Springs  and  gathered  the  dates  for  a  change 
in  diet.  They  were  a  numerous  race  of  cattle  raisers  who 
subsisted  at  other  times  upon  powdered  locusts  stirred 
in  milk. 

Herodotus;  IV.  183. 


Springs  of  the  Garamantes 

.  The  Garamantes  occupied  the  largest  of  the  Sandhill 
Spring  tracts.  They  made  shift  to  cover  the  salt  and  sand 
with  layers  of  earth  in  which  they  raised  crops  that  were 
shaded  by  fruit-bearing  palm  trees. 

They  raised  cattle  with  an  unusual  downward  curve 
to  their  horns  which  forced  them  to  walk  backwards  while 
grazing,  to  prevent  the  horns  from  sticking  in  the  ground 
and  stopping  them  as  they  nibbled. 

In  four-horse  chariots  this  tribe  made  war  on  the  Trog- 
lodytes who  fed  on  lizards  and  screeched  like  bats ;  though 
perhaps  neither  of  these  offenses  against  right  living  and 


AFRICA  429 

speaking  would  have  brought  on  them  their  neighbors' 
reproof  if  the  offenders'  country  had  not  produced  the 
precious  carbuncle. 

Herodotus;  IV.  183. 


310 

Springs  of  Debris 

If  Pliny  did  not  misread  a  parenthetical  sentence  of 
Herodotus,  and  make  two  series  of  Springs  out  of  one 
series,  these  Springs  were  also  in  the  domain  of  the 
Garamantes,  at  a  place  called  Debris;  they  were  as  re- 
markable for  their  extraordinary  changes  in  temperature 
as  were  the  Springs  of  Ammon,  and  more  particularly  so 
because  they  reversed  the  order  the  latter  followed,  being 
boiling  hot  between  noon  and  midnight,  and  freezing 
cold  during  the  other  twelve  hours  of  the  day. 

Pliny;  V.  s. 

311 

Springs  of  the  Atarantes 

The  Atarantes  were  a  tribe  who  had  no  individual 
names;  every  member  of  it  was  called  "Atarante, "  a 
custom  th3,t  would  seem  to  have  necessitated  consider- 
able descriptive  ability  when  speaking  of  people  who 
were  not  present. 

Herodotus;  IV.  184. 


312 

Springs  of  the  Atlantes 

These  lay  at  the  western  end  of  the  strip  running 
towards  Mt.  Atlas  beyond  which  were  the  confines  of 


430  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

the  earth  down  to  so  few  years  ago  that  Columbus  was 
the  first  to  cross  them,  and,  traversing  the  "Sea  of 
Atlas,"  look  upon  that  other  half  of  the  world  that  its 
giant  supporter  had  so  long  held  out  of  sight. 

The  homes  of  these  Sandhill  Springs  were  oases  which 
were  sometimes  called  "  Islands, "  and  one  may  speculate 
whether  the  supposedly  lost  Island  of  Atlantis  is  not  still 
to  be  found  in  the  oasis  near  Mt.  Atlas,  instead  of  sunk 
in  the  depths  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  for  the  original  de- 
scription of  it  as  being  near  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  excludes 
all  connection  with  any  part  of  the  American  continent. 
Not  that  the  story  did  not  probably  have  some  founda- 
tion, nor  that  the  architecture  of  Egypt  may  not  have 
had  its  beginnings  in  South  America;  and  not  that,  on 
the  eastern  side,  China  and  Japan  did  not  owe  something 
to  the  North  American  Indian  and  the  Eskimo. 

The  oasis,  or  Island  of  Atlantis,  furnished  as  it  was,  on 
the  western  side,  with  an  abundance  of  trees  and  water 
and  numerous  fruits,  might  well  have  accounted  for  the 
charms  of  the  lost  island  of  Plato's  dream. 

No  one  can  read  the  epitome-like  passages  of  Hesiod 
without  feeling  that  he  was  but  summarizing  well-known 
data  that  had  come  down  from  previous  ages,  nor  without 
regretting  that  they  are  all  lost  save  a  sentence  or  two, 
such  as  the  Egyptian  hint,  which  might  have  furnished 
the  basis  for  Plato's  dream,  that  more  than  9000  years 
before  the  Christian  Era,  a  people,  crossing  the  confines 
of  Atlas,  had  overrun  the  African  continent  and  pene- 
trated Europe  until  they  were  stopped  and  defeated  by 
the  predecessors  of  the  Athenians ;  and  another  hint  that 
the  progenitors  of  the  Arabs  and  the  Moors  were  brought 
from  India  by  Hercules. 

There  is  a  weird  fascination  in  that  line  of  Morocco 
coast  that  was  once  the  limit  of  the  living,  and  where  the 


AFRICA  431 

shades  of  the  departed  disappeared  in  the  mists  of  its 
still  treacherous  and  engulfing  surfs.  About  it  were 
staged  the  scenes  for  the  acts  of  the  Gorgons,  and  the 
Hesperides  with  their  garden  and  dragon,  and  for  the 
wrestling  match  between  Hercules  and  Antaeus  who  drew 
inexhaustible  strength  from  the  ground,  above  which 
Hercules  had  to  hold  him  in  order  to  win.  The  match 
took  place  at  Larache,  the  ancient  Lixos;  and  the  hill 
near  Tangier  is  the  mound  over  the  ninety  foot  long 
skeleton  of  the  loser. 

Herodotus;  IV.  184. 


Fountain  of  the  Sun 

The  most  renowned  of  the  oases  of  the  Libyan  desert 
of  Africa  contained  the  fountain  of  the  Sun  and  the 
temple  of  Ammon. 

The  peculiarity  attributed  to  the  fountain  might,  on 
first  thought,  be  considered  the  result  of  an  attempt  to 
rival,  with  temperatures,  the  productions  of  the  creators 
of  Springs  producing  many  substances,  like  those  of 
Mahomet,  Calanus,  and  Apollonius  in  his  fountain  of 
HephaBstus.  At  dawn  it  was  tepid;  at  midday  cold  as 
ice,  and  at  midnight  it  boiled. 

A  story  is  told  about  it  to  the  effect  that  a  king,  who 
was  lost  in  the  desert  and  on  the  point  of  perishing  from 
thirst,  saw  and  followed  a  ram  which  suddenly  disap- 
peared just  as  a  fountain  gushed  up  in  the  place  where 
the  animal  vanished. 

It  was  the  wonder  of  all  the  ancients  who  visited  the 
temple,  a  structure  about  seventy  feet  square,  and  some 
four  hundred  miles  northwest  of  Thebes,  which  was 


432  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

devoted  to  the  worship  of  the  ram-headed  god  Amun, 
and  to  the  uses  of  an  oracle  which  was  as  old  as  any,  and 
at  one  time  perhaps  the  most  renowned  in  the  world. 
Perseus  and  Hercules  made  pilgrimages  to  it;  and  Alex- 
ander the  Great  consulted  it,  and  would  have  lost  his 
life  in  a  sandstorm  on  the  trip  but  for  the  protection  of  a 
fortunate  rain,  and  the  guidance  of  two  friendly  crows 
that  no  doubt  came  from  the  same  source  as  the  crow  that 
guided  Battus  to  the  fountain  of  Cyrene. 

Alexander,  it  is  said,  did  not  hear  the  answers  given 
by  the  oracle  inside  the  temple  although  his  retinue  on 
the  outside  heard  them,  which  is  stranger  still,  as  the 
account  says  the  answers  were  not  given  in  words,  as  by 
other  oracles,  but  chiefly  "by  nods  and  signs,"  possibly 
those  made  by  the  statue  of  the  god  as  it  undulated  when 
carried  in  procession  by  eighty  priests. 

The  water  of  the  Spring  must  under  some  conditions 
have  played  an  important  part  in  the  priests'  predictions, 
as  a  power  of  divination  existed  in  even  small  and  sepa- 
rate quantities  of  it  that  were  sold  by  the  priests  and 
carried  away  to  distant  places  where  there  was  a  great 
demand  for  it,  after  poor  patronage  had  closed  the  temple 
at  Delphi  and,  as  Juvenal  says,  the  oracle  had  become 
dumb. 

The  fountain  rose  in  a  small  tract  about  three  by  six 
miles  in  size,  one  of  the  Islands  of  the  Blest,  the  name 
given  to  the  African  oases  that  appear  where  a  foundation 
of  sandstone  covered  with  clay  retains  the  water  that 
elsewhere  sinks  through  the  desert  sands. 

A  grove  of  date  trees  south  of  the  temple  surrounded 
the  fountain  which  now  feeds  a  brook  that  runs  towards 
the  ruins  of  the  ancient  fane,  and,  finding  no  accommoda- 
tion there  as  formerly,  turns  sadly  away  and  wanders 
disconsolately  into  a  swamp. 


AFRICA  433 

With  the  exception  of  the  extremes  attributed  to  its 
temperature,  its  seeming  variations  may  be  accounted 
for  by  the  tepidity  of  its  waters,  which  were  colder  than 
the  heated  atmosphere  of  the  day  but  warmer  than  the 
dew-cooled  air  at  night. 

The  ruins  of  the  temple  are  at  Ummebeda. 

Moore  mentions  this  Spring  in  his  Irish  Melody  entitled 
"Fly  Not  Yet";— 

"Fly  not  yet,  the  fount  that  played 
In  times  of  old  through  Ammon's  Shade, 
Though  icy  cold  by  day  it  ran 
Yet  still,  like  souls  of  mirth,  began 
To  burn  when  night  was  near." 

Herodotus;  IV.  i8i. 
,6trabo;  XVII.  I.  §  43- 


Flora's  Spring 

Tlora,  who  was  at  first  called  Chloris,  was  a  nymph  of 
the  Blessed  Plains. 

After  a  courtship  of  primeval  intensity.  Flora  became 
the  wife  of  Zephyrus  the  brother  of  Boreas,  and  her  sub- 
sequent happiness  is  likened  to  that  of  one  who  enjoys 
perpetual  spring. 

Her  fond  husband  gave  her  dominion  over  the  empire 
of  Flowers,  and  presented  her  with  a  garden  that  was 
irrigated  by  a  Spring  of  trickling  water  and  filled  with 
flowers  of  the  choicest  kind,  flowers  that  Flora  succes- 
sively colored  with  such  divers  hues  that  even  she  herself 
could  not  reckon  the  multitude  of  their  tints.  Flora's 
modesty  forbade  her  to  tell  how  beautiful  she  was,  but  it 
did  not  deter  her  from  boasting  that  the  world  was  in- 

2S 


434  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

debted  to  her  for  this  diversity  of  tints,  as,  prior  to  her 
experiments,  the  earth  was  of  one  hue,  which  was  pre- 
sumably the  montonous  green  of  the  grasses. 

Detailed  particulars  of  the  processes  that  Flora  em- 
ployed to  produce  flowers  that  were  not  all  of  one  color 
were  not  disclosed,  but  it  is  admitted  that  the  reds  and 
the  pinks  were  due  to  the  agency  of  human  blood. 

In  the  case  of  the  violet,  the  life  fluid  was  furnished  by 
Attis  whose  royal  descent  perhaps  accounted  for  the 
blueness  of  his  blood,  and  its  effect  on  the  color  of  the 
flower. 

The  properties  of  some  of  Flora's  flowers  were  no  less 
marvelous  than  the  number  of  tints;  one  of  them,  ab- 
solutely unique,  and  of  which  she  possessed  the  only 
specimen  in  existence,  was  of  such  potency  that  it  be- 
came a  father  in  several  instances  of  which  Flora  relates 
the  particulars. 

Flora's  sovereignty  extended  over  the  blossoms  of  all 
the  earth's  products  whether  they  appeared  in  fields  or 
gardens,  and  it  was  consequently  to  her  that  the  Seasons 
repaired  to  obtain  the  various  supplies  that  they  dis- 
tributed in  the  appropriate  months.  The  Graces,  too, 
were  her  constant  patrons,  and  she  furnished  them  with 
the  numerous  flowers  they  required  for  the  chaplets  and 
garlands  with  which  they  bound  their  heavenly  heads. 

It  has  been  surmised  that  the  original  of  Flora's  history 
was  a  Greek  narration  regarding  the  Spring  of  Chloris 
which  has  been  lost,  but  that  Ovid  had  it  in  mind  when 
writing  his  account  of  Flora  who  was  a  comparatively 
modern  Italian  goddess,  created  by  the  Roman  senate  in 
a  session  of  shame.  According  to  Plutarch,  Flora  left 
a  large  fortune  to  the  Roman  people  on  condition  that 
her  birthday  should  always  be  celebrated  by  a  festival 
to  be  called  the  Floralia.    Rather  than  forego  the  fortune, 


AFRICA  435 

which  Flora  had  made  in  no  maidenly  manner,  the  re- 
sourceful senate,  taking  a  leaf  from  the  unique  flower, 
created  her  the  Goddess  of  Flowers,  in  order  that  the 
celebration  of  the  Floralia  might  be  surrounded  by  an 
odor  of  sanctity  rather  than  with  a  taint  of  the  streets. 

It  is  here  assumed  that  the  Plains  of  the  Blest  in  which 
Ovid  locates  this  Spring  were,  in  the  Greek  original,  the 
Islands  of  the  Blest,  in  Africa. 

Ovid;  Fasti.  V.  line  309. 


Tacape 

The  Spring  of  Tacape  was  in  a  very  fertile  little  district 
three  miles  square,  an  oasis  that  appeared  in  the  sands 
of  Africa,  that  vied  with  the  residence  of  Rasselas  in  the 
valley  of  Amhara,  "where  every  month  dropped  fruits 
upon  the  ground." 

The  growths  of  the  district  were  so  numerous  that  they 
were  almost  telescoped  into  one  another;  they  consisted 
of  enormous  palms  under  which  grew  olive  trees;  under 
the  latter  the  fig  tree  grew,  and  under  the  fig  the  pome- 
granate; and  under  that  the  vine;  and  under  the  vine 
grew  herbs,  and  plants  of  the  garden  and  of  the  field, 
including  wheat.  There  was,  thus,  a  variety  of  ripening 
periods  and  no  part  of  the  year  in  which  a  crop  of  some 
description  could  not  be  gathered — and  yet  the  people 
did  nothing  at  all  to  promote  this  fruitfulness. 

The  Spring  had  an  abundant  flow  of  water  which, 
however,  was  distributed  to  the  inhabitants  only  at 
certain  hours. 

Tacape  is  identified  with  Cebes  on  the  eastern  coast  of 
Tunis  just  under  the  34th  parallel,  although  the  Springs 


436  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

at  that  place,  the  Aquae  Tacapitanae  or  El-Hammath,  are 
now  warm  mineral  Springs. 

Pliny;  XVIII.  51. 


316 

CiNYPS 

The  Spring  of  Cinyps  rose  in  a  hill  called  The  Graces, 
thickly  shaded  with  spreading  trees.  The  district  it  was 
in  also  bore  the  name  of  Cinyps,  and  was  itself  like  a  third 
continental  Grace,  for  it  was  the  only  part  of  Libya  that 
could  be  compared  in  fertility  with  Europe  and  Asia, 
rivaling  the  land  to  the  east  of  it  with  all  of  its  attractions, 
the  land  of  the  Lotophagi,  the  Lotos  Eaters,  whose  con- 
tinuous afternoon  and  other  charms  made  travelers  forget 
their  native  homes. 

It  was  well  watered  with  Springs  that  were  ever  re- 
plenished with  rains,  and  had  a  rich  black  soil  that  re- 
turned the  husbandman  three  hundredfold. 

The  district  lay  between  the  two  Syrtes,  the  Larger 
and  the  Smaller  now  known,  the  former  as  the  Gulf  of 
Sydra,  and  the  latter  as  the  Gulf  of  Cabes.  The  country 
was  occupied  by  the  Macae,  who  followed  the  recent 
modern  fashion  of  the  North  American  Indians  and  the 
Chinese  in  their  manner  of  wearing  their  hair;  and  who 
made  use  of  ostrich  skins  for  armor,  regarding  which  no 
doubt  Dorieus  was  well  qualified  to  speak,  for  the  Macae 
were  able  to  drive  him  and  his  Spartans  from  Cinyps 
when,  angry  because  Cleomenes  had  been  chosen  king  of 
Lacedasmon  instead  of  himself,  he  attempted  to  make  a 
settlement  at  Cinyps  without  following  the  usual  custom 
of  consulting  the  oracle  at  Delphi  in  regard  to  the  enter- 
prise— and  this,  too,  was  the  same  Dorieus  who  had 
assisted  Milo  in  conquering  Sybaris. 


AFRICA  437 

The  Spring  gave  rise  to  a  river  of  the  same  name 
through  which  its  waters  were  carried  twenty-five  miles 
north  to  the  Mediterranean,  where  there  was  a  second 
town  of  Cinyps. 

The  Spring's  httle  river  is  now  the  Wadi  Quasam. 

Herodotus;  IV.  175  and  198. 


Tunis 

There  were  hot  Springs  at  the  city  of  Tunis  in  Africa. 

These  it  is  said  may  be  the  hot  Springs  at  Hamman 

I'Enf  near  the  bottom  of  the  Gulf  and  the  town  of  Carpis. 

Strabo;  XVII.  3.    J  16. 


3.^ 

Zama 

The  voice  was  rendered  more  musical  by  drinking  of 
the  waters  of  the  Spring  at  Zama. 

This  fountain  is  presumed  to  have  been  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  the  town  of  Zama,  about  a  hundred  miles 
southwest  of  Carthage,  which  is  now  known  as  Jama. 
It  contained  a  royal  palace  of  King  Juba  and  was  the 
scene  of  Hannibal's  defeat  by  Scipio  in  201  B.C. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  la. 
Strabo;  XVII.  3.    5  9. 


Carthage 
There  was  a  fountain,  in  the  Carthaginian  Dominions, 
on  which  something  floated  that  resembled  oil,  but  dark 


438  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

in  color,  which  they  skimmed  off  and  made  into  balls 
and  used  for  their  sheep  and  cattle. 

Athensus;  II.  I7> 


320 

Cyrene 

There  was  scarcely  in  all  the  world  a  finer  location,  or 
a  more  beautiful  prospect  than  where  the  inexhaustible 
Spring  of  Cyrene  opened  its  eye  on  the  outlook. 

Around  it  bloomed  flowers  in  wild  luxuriance,  and  of 
such  pleasing  and  delicate  odors  that  finally  they  were 
imprisoned  in  perfumes  and  sent  abroad  on  the  highways 
of  trade,  to  refresh  and  delight  the  senses  of  appreciative 
people  in  less  fortunate  lands. 

Fruits  and  vegetables,  usually  the  products  of  various 
climates,  flourished  in  the"  neighborhood  of  the  Spring 
through  the  greater  part  of  the  year.  And,  growing  wild, 
were  plants  of  such  medicinal  value  that  in  later  times 
their  export  formed  a  large  and  lucrative  commerce,  the 
staple  of  which  was  the  gum  of  the  Silphium. 

The  call  of  the  myriads  of  flowers  was  eagerly  answered 
by  armies  of  bees,  and  their  product  of  honey  made  it 
famous,  even  where  honey  made  from  other  flowers  was 
plentiful. 

On  the  natural  vegetation  all  animals  thrived,  and  the 
succulent  grass  nurtured  a  breed  of  horses  that  distant 
poets  came  to  name  in  admiration. 

There,  too,  the  plumes  of  the  ostriches  were  smoother 
and  finer  than  those  that  were  borne  by  birds  that  bred 
about  Springs  with  a  less  softening  influence. 

In  such  featureful  surroundings  on  the  Plateau  of 
Barca,  some  2000  feet  in  height,  overlooking  the  sea  and 


AFRICA  439 

ten  miles  away  from  it,  Cyrene  rose,  and  then  sought  the 
Mediterranean,  through  a  charming  ravine  that  rioted 
in  the  richest  vegetation,  and  intersected  the  ntmierous 
climate-making  terraces  from  the  top  of  the  tableland 
down  to  the  shore. 

This  plateau  was  in  the  middle  of  the  projecting  bosom 
of  the  African  coast,  just  opposite  and  two  hundred  miles 
distant  from  the  Peloponnesus;  it  is  called  the  Green 
Mountain,  and  the  summits  of  real  mountains  on  the 
south  shut  off  from  it  the  sands  and  the  scorching  heats  of 
the  Sahara ;  while  on  the  north  it  was  open  to  every  sea- 
cooled  breeze  that  roamed  across  the  inland  ocean. 

This  delightful  land,  one  of  the  most  enchanting  places 
on  the  surface  of  the  globe,  was  called  "The  Garden  of 
Zeus"  ages  before  the  autonym  Allah  came  into  use,  and 
here  Apollo  brought  Cyrene  in  a  golden  car  whose  steeds 
were  swans  of  such  swiftness  that  they  made  the  journey 
from  Pelion  in  a  single  day. 

Cyrene  was  the  daughter  of  Chlidanope  and  Hypsaeus 
the  King  of  the  Lapithae. 

She  found  her  fullest  enjoyment  and  pleasure  in  pro- 
tecting the  flocks  and  herds,  not  as  a  meditating  shep- 
herdess sighing  for  a  swain,  but  in  energetic  encounters 
with  the  most  ferocious  animals  that  sought  their  prey 
among  the  defenseless  sheep  and  kine.  It  was  while  so 
engaged,  and  when,  unarmed,  she  was  subduing  a  lion 
that  had  long  been  a  ravisher  of  the  largest  oxen,  that 
Apollo  first  saw  her,  and  loved  her  at  sight,  and  carried 
her  off  to  this  fountain  which  acquired  her  name,  though 
sometimes  also  called  Apollo's  Fountain.  The  son  of 
this  union  was  Aristaeus  who  discovered  that  bees  could 
be  produced  from  the  buried  carcass  of  an  ox.  He  married 
Autonoe,  a  daughter  of  Cadmus,  and  became  the  father 
of  the  unfortunate  Actseon. 


440  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

Ages  later,  the  Dorian  Aristoteles  founded  a  colony  at 
this  Spring,  and  gave  his  city  the  fountain's  name.  The 
city  toda}''  is  a  village,  but  the  ear  still  easily  catches  the 
echo  of  its  first  name  in  its  present  one  of  Kurin. 

Among  the  many  trifles  that  make  the  sum  of  human 
life,  men's  fortunes,  as  well  as  their  follies,  frequently 
spring  from  their  foibles,  and  if  Aristoteles  had  not  been 
born  a  stutterer,  the  Spring  that  is  one  of  the  charms  of 
the  equal  of  the  most  beautiful  spot  in  the  world  would 
have  flowed  unpraised  by  Pindar,  and  Aristoteles  would 
not  have  become  the  founder,  and  afterwards  the  king, 
of  a  settlement  whose  borders  extended  from  Carthage 
on  the  west  to  Egypt  on  the  east,  and  was  ruled  over  for 
two  hundred  years  by  his  descendants. 

Aristoteles,  more  dependent  than  Demosthenes,  sought 
a  cure  for  his  impediment  from  the  Delphic  Oracle,  by 
which  he  was  advised  to  found  a  city  in  Africa.  After 
considerable  hesitation  and  delay,  he  started  on  his 
voyage  in  search  of  fluent  speech.  He  left  the  island  of 
Thera,  now  called  Santorin,  and  in  shape  a  diminutive 
Bermuda  in  the  Ionian  Sea.  It  is  a  very  small  island — 
it  was  formed  of  a  clod  of  earth  thrown  overboard  by  the 
Argonauts — and  can  boast  of  nothing  more  than  being 
the  mother  city  of  the  city  of  Cyrene. 

The  expedition  landed  on  the  African  island  of  Platea, 
where  two  years  of  suffering  brought  no  improvement 
in  Aristoteles'  trouble.  Then  he  sought  the  Oracle 
again,  this  time  with  a  grievance,  which  was,  however, 
quickly  set  aside;  if  he  had  foolishly  mistaken  an  is- 
land for  a  continent,  there  was  an  obvious  remedy 
still  left. 

So  he  returned,  and  transferred  his  colony  to  Aziris  on 
the  mainland,  and  spent  six  more  years  in  stammering; 
then  one  day,  while  prospecting,  he  was  cured  of  his 


AFRICA  441 

impediment  in  a  moment — and  knew  that  he  had  found 
the  right  location. 

His  good  fortune  was  due  to  the  guidance  of  a  friendly 
crow  and,  like  Cyrene's,  to  an  encounter  with  a  lion.  He 
and  the  lady,  however,  met  their  lions  in  different  spirits, 
for  Aristoteles,  powerful  king  though  he  afterwards  be- 
came, was  so  terrified  at  the  sight  of  his  lion  that,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life,  he  cried  out,  loud  and  clearly — and 
then  stuttered  no  more. 

Joyfully  and  without  delay,  he  moved  the  colony  to 
its  permanent  home  and  built  his  city  about  the  fountain, 
a  city  to  which  Apollo  gave  more  advantages  than  to 
any  other,  as  Callimachus,  who  was  one  of  its  natives, 
modestly  admits. 

Aristoteles  is  usually  designated  as  Battus,  which  was 
the  Libyan  term  for  king,  as  Pharaoah  was  among  the 
Egyptians. 

The  colony  when  established  in  the  right  place  grew 
rapidly,  and  intermixture  with  the  brown,  brawny  and 
buxom  Libyan  women,  produced  men  of  energy  and 
eriterprise  who  quickly  made  use  of  the  natural  resources 
of  the  country.  Through  the  new  city's  port  of  Apol- 
lonia,  its  commerce  became  extended  and  fruitful;  the 
flowers,  that  once  wasted  their  sweetness  in  the  undis- 
covered Garden  of  Zeus,  furnished  perfumes;  the  bees,, 
honey;  the  herds,  hides;  and  the  plants,  medicines,  corn,, 
olives  and  wine,  that  filled  ships  whose  voyages  made  the- 
citizens  wealthy;  then  culture,  following  on  the  heels  of 
commerce  and  leisure,  developed  men  whose  names  are- 
still  prominent  in  Grecian  art,  literature,  science  and 
athletics,  for  within  two  centuries  of  the  founding  of 
Gyrene  in  631  B.C.  its  horsemen  and  its  runners  were 
celebrated  prize  winners  in  the  games  of  the  Morea. 

Indeed  it  was  not  until  the  time  of  Trajan  that  Cyrene's. 


442  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

prosperity  began  to  wane;  then,  weakened  by  a  Jewish 
massacre  of  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  its  territory's 
people,  it  became  an  easy  prey  to  unassimilated  Libyan 
barbarians.  Afterwards,  in  6i6  a.d.,  the  Persians  over- 
ran it;  and  finally,  in  647,  the  Arabs  conquered  Cyrene 
and  possessed  themselves  of  its  beautiful  fountain. 

This  Spring,  so  old  that  its  waters  might  seem  to  have 
condensed  from  the  mists  of  mythology,  became  a  tem- 
porary possession  of  the  youngest  country  of  the  earth 
when  in  April,  1805,  the  United  States  warship  "Argus" 
and  two  others,  after  bombarding  the  African  coast, 
raised  the  flag  they  represented  on  the  plateau  of  Barca. 

Callimachus  calls  this  fountain  Cyre. 

Herodotus;  IV.  158  and  IS5  et  seq. 
Callimachus;  Hymn  to  Apollo;  line  87. 
Pausanias;  X.  15. 


321 

Thestes 

The  Spring  of  Thestes  marked  the  place  where  the 
Egyptians  had  their  first  battle  with  the  Greeks  of  Cyrene 
and  met  with  disaster. 

The  rapid  growth  of  Battus'  settlement  was  fostered 
by  a  vigorous  propaganda  disseminated  through  the 
oracle  in  announcements  that  the  land  was  being  rapid- 
ly taken  up,  and  with  prophecies  that  those  who 
delayed  migrating  and  getting  a  share  would  one  day 
repent. 

The  Libyans  were  in  no  need  of  an  oracle  to  tell  them 
how  fast  the  land  was  going,  because  with  every  acre's 
increase  to  the  Cyrenean  territory  there  was  an  acre  less 
in  that  of  the  Libyans.  By  volunteering  to  become  sub- 
jects of  King  Apries  of  Egypt,  they  secured  his  interest 


AFRICA  443 

in  the  growth  of  Cyrene,  and  he  sent  out  an  army  to 
stabilize  the  shifting  acres. 

His  army  and  the  forces  of  the  colonists  met  and  fought 
by  the  fountain  of  Thestes,  and  the  Greeks  secured  such 
a  decided  victory  that  few  of  the  Egyptians  escaped  with 
their  lives. 

Then  that  early  League  of  Nations  came  to  a  sudden 
end,  for  the  Libyans  laid  the  blame  for  their  increased 
misfortunes  upon  King  Apries — and  they  revolted  from 
him. 

Herodotus;  IV.  159. 


322 

Ex  Pede  Herculem 

After  securing  the  Golden  Fleece,  the  Argonauts, 
what  with  their  anxiety  to  avoid  the  Colchians  who 
swarmed  the  sea  in  pursuit  of  them,  and  what  with  a 
succession  of  storms  that  again  and  again  blew  them  from 
their  course,  were  driven  to  nearly  every  part  of  the  world 
of  which  their  creator  was  cognizant,  and  to  many  that 
are  even  now  unknown. 

The  last  adverse  wind  of  which  they  were  the  victims 
was  aided  by  a  far-reaching  wave  that  carried  them  over 
the  coast  line,  and  stranded  them  such  a  great  distance 
from  the  sea  that  the  nearest  navigable  water  was  a 
twelve  days'  journey,  further  inland  still. 

This  water  was  the  Tritonian  Lake  in  Africa,  and  to  it 
the  crew  with  exhausting  exertion  bodily  carried  the 
Argo. 

Over  the  desert  hollows,  and  hills  of  sand,  they  were 
guided  by  the  hoof  tracks  of  a  horse,  a  marine  monster 
that  they  felt  assured  would  make  its  way  again  to  water. 


444  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

The  water  of  the  Lake,  which  connected  with  the  sea, 
was  salty,  and,  as  soon  as  they  had  launched  their  burden 
on  its  bosom,  they  began  a  frantic  search  for  a  Spring  to 
quench  the  thirst  that  was  driving  them  mad. 

Very  near  the  Lake  they  found  a  plain  where  three  fair 
and  golden-haired  women  were  lamenting  around  the 
body  of  a  large  serpent,  terribly  wounded  and  with  only 
a  tiny  spark  of  life  left  in  the  tip  of  its  writhing  tail.  This 
was  all  that  was  left  of  Ladon,  the  dragon  that  had 
guarded  the  golden  apples  of  Juno. 

The  fair  women  were  the  Hesperides  who  had  min- 
istered to  the  dragon  in  his  lifetime,  and  on  seeing  the 
crew  they  turned  to  dust  and  ashes.  Orpheus,  however, 
with  words  as  charming  as  his  music,  besought  them  to 
resume  their  forms  and  point  out  some  fount  of  water, 
either  gushing  from  a  rock  or  bubbling  from  the  earth, 
to  quench  the  thirst  with  which  he  and  his  companions 
were  parched;  and  the  goddesses,  after  causing  grass  to 
spring  up  from  the  earth,  and  then  shoots  of  taller  vege- 
tation, became  themselves  three  trees,  a  poplar,  an  elm 
and  a  willow,  out  of  whose  protective  trunks  they  looked 
and  spoke ;  telling  how  a  man  with  gleaming  eyes  under  a 
grim  forehead,  garbed  about  with  a  lion's  skin,  and  bear- 
ing a  heavy  bough  of  olive  and  a  bow,  had  shot  the  ser- 
pent with  poisoned  arrows  only  the  day  before.  In  this 
description  the  amazed  Argonauts  easily  recognized  the 
hero  they  had  abandoned  far  in  the  north  near  the  Spring 
of  Pegae.  And,  further,  they  learned  that,  after  this,  his 
eleventh  labor,  Hercules,  parched  with  thirst  as  they 
were,  rushed  about  in  search  of  water,  and,  finding  none, 
vented  his  rage  in  so  viciously  kicking  a  rock  that  he 
opened  a  fissure  in  its  side,  through  which  a  Spring 
gushed  out  at  once. 

The  Spring  was  shown  them,  close  at  hand,  and  one 


AFRICA  445 

after  another  they  slaked  their  thirst  and  then  enjoyed 
a  second  round.  Their  hearts  melted  when  their  mouths 
were  moistened;  each  one  felt  that  Hercules  had  saved 
them  from  death  through  thirst,  and,  wishing  they  could 
tell  him  so,  one  impulse  made  them  strain  their  eyes  in 
every  direction  with  the  hope  that  he  might  still  be  seen 
and  beckoned  back.  But  Lynceus,  with  telescopic  vision, 
who  could  even  see  through  trees  and  far  into  the  earth, 
called  out,  that  he  could  only  just  discern  the  hero's 
form,  faint  as  the  new  moon's  tips  when  mantled  in  a 
mist,  and  so  far  off  it  seemed  to  be  a  speck  upon  the 
arching  line  made  by  the  meeting  of  the  boundless  sky 
and  the  desert's  endless  sands;  so  distant  that  not  the 
fleetest  in  their  company  could  hope  to  overtake  him. 

Later,  however,  two  of  the  party  who,  as  Hercules  had 
learned,  argued  most  strongly  against  going  back  for 
him  at  Cius,  did  meet  the  hero,  and  most  unfortunately, 
for  he  then  took  from  them  the  lives  he  had  saved  by  his 
foot-made  fount  in  Africa. 

This  labor  of  procuring  the  apples  of  the  Hesperides 
was  one  of  the  two  additional  toils  that  Eurystheus  im- 
posed upon  Hercules,  on  the  ground  that  he  had  been 
assisted  in  two  of  the  original  ten;  by  lolaus  in  killing 
the  Hydra;  and  by  the  river  in  cleaning  the  Augean 
property. 

The  time  spent  in  the  last  two  of  the  dozen  was  prac- 
tically lost,  as  in  both  instances  what  Hercules  procured 
was  returned,  the  apples,  to  the  Hesperides;  and  Cer- 
berus, to  Hades.  The  trip  to  the  garden,  however,  added 
a  timely  contribution  to  geographical  knowledge,  and 
was  in  effect  a  voyage  of  discovery,  for  no  one  knew  where 
the  garden  was  located,  and  the  hero  consequently  re- 
ceived many  conflicting  directions,  in  following  which  he 
traveled  far  to  the  north,  to  the  country  of  the  Hyper- 


446  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

boreans;  and  then  to  the  southern  limit  of  Africa,  and  to 
the  end  of  the  world  on  the  Atlantic  Ocean;  and,  finally, 
eastward  to  the  neighborhood  of  Cyrene,  which  proved 
to  be  the  actual  location  of  the  garden. 

Apollonius;  IV.  line  1441. 


EGYPT 

323 
The  Nile  Spring 

A  longing  to  know  where  the  Nile  rose,  or  to  see  the 
source  of  its  initial  drop,  ran  through  the  minds  of  many 
men  age  after  age  from  at  least  the  time  of  an  ancient 
Egyptian  king  named  Rameses;  if,  as  some  suppose,  he 
was  the  hard-hearted  monarch  whose  negotiations  with 
Moses  regarding  the  Exodus  are  recorded  in  the  Bible, 
then  it  is  not  unlikely  that  Moses  himself  was  once  con- 
cerned about  the  river's  source,  and  was  one  of  the  officers 
that  Rameses  sent  south  to  locate  the  Spring  of  the  Nile ; 
for  Moses  was  a  member  of  one  of  the  expeditions  that 
Rameses  sent  to  Ethiopia  in  which  country  he  married 
his  first  wife,  who  was  a  daughter  of  its  ruler  and  the 
cause  of  the  upbraidings  of  his  sister  Miriam. 

Another  Egyptian  king,  Psammitichus,  was  so  anxious 
to  have  the  Spring  discovered  that  he  carefully  bred  up 
a  band  of  boys  for  an  exploring  expedition,  and  accus- 
tomed them  to  live  solely  on  fish  so  that  they  would 
neither  have  to  cumber  themselves  with  provisions, 
nor  be  forced  to  interrupt  the  search  and  leave  the 
stream  to  hunt  for  other  food  than  the  river  itself  would 
provide. 

Alexander  the  Great,  who  turned  aside  to  see  the  Spring 
of  Scamander,  was  no  less  interested  in  the  fountain  of 
the  Nile,  and  might,  perchance,  have  drunk  of  it  if  his 
unfortunate  draught  from  the  Spring  of  Nonacris  had  not 

447 


448  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

cut  short  his  career  of  conquest  in  Africa  and  on  the 
earth,  June  30th,  323  B.C. 

Cambyses,  too,  leaving  the  highways  that  led  to  booty,, 
turned  his  steps  to  the  south  intending  to  wrest  from  the 
river  the  secret  of  its  birth;  but  a  wider  acquaintance 
with  death  was  the  chief  result  of  his  quest,  for  the  heat 
and  lack  of  food  caused  such  mortality  among  his  men 
that  he  was  obliged  to  turn  back  no  wiser  than  the  pre- 
vious seekers. 

Caesar,  chasing  Pompey  in  the  Civil  War,  having 
reached  the  mouth  of  the  secretive  river,  said  that  the 
greatest  of  his  great  ambitions  was  to  know  the  cause  of 
the  stream,  and  its  unknown  head  that  had  lain  hid 
through  so  many  centuries.  "Let  me  have  an  assured 
hope,"  said  he,  "of  seeing  the  source  of  the  Nile,  and  1 
will  forego  civil  war." 

Even  Nero,  amid  the  distractions  of  his  horrible  orgies, 
took  an  interest  in  the  search  and  sent  an  expedition  of 
surveyors  to  locate  the  source  of  the  Nile,  and,  if,  as  it  is 
recorded,  they  reached  latitude  4  degrees  north  before 
being  turned  back  by  impassable  marshes,  they  won 
nearly  as  close  to  the  Spring  as  Livingstone  did  in  186 1. 

Not  only  was  there  the  incentive  that  has  secured  the 
success  of  nearly  every  human  enterprise,  the  incentive  to 
do  what  others  have  failed  to  accomplish,  but  there  were 
the  strange  mysteries  of  the  stream  to  excite  seeker  after 
seeker — the  wonder  that  a  river  that  flowed  through  a 
rainless  land  should  expand  to  the  size  of  a  sea  every 
year  at  nearly  the  same  hour ;  and  the  uncanny  fact  that 
the  Nile  broadened  out  in  summer  while  other  rivers 
swelled  in  the  spring  when  the  snows  began  to  melt.  Ex- 
plaining that  this  was  proof  that  the  Nile  was  not  fed  with 
snow  only  increased  the  anxiety  to  see  a  snowless  source 
that  could  produce  such  a  vast  volume  of  water ;  and  age 


EGYPT  449 

after  age  responded  to  the  call  of  the  Nile  Spring,  as  in 
subsequent  years  the  multitudes  went  to  Niagara. 

But  all  the  explorers  failed. 

Even  the  poets  with  their  vast  and  unlimited  resources 
■were  at  a  loss,  and  their  best  contribution  to  the  subject 
was  an  explanation  of  why  the  source  had  so  cunningly 
concealed  itself;  in  this,  they  affirmed  that  when  Phaeton, 
frightened  by  the  Dragon  in  the  sky,  lost  control  of  the 
liorses  of  the  Sun  and  set  the  world  on  fire,  the  Nile  fled  in 
terror  to  the  remotest  parts  of  the  earth  and  hid  its 
Jiead. 

Then  the  scientists  found  the  abandoned  ground  a 
fertile  field  for  raising  theories,  as  the  product  of  any 
man's  guess  was  as  good  as  another's. 

The  Spring  as  pictured  by  some  of  those  guessers  was 
of  a  character  in  keeping  with  the  great  mystery  of  the 
mighty  river,  and  was  such  a  fountain  as  never  was  seen 
<on  land  or  in  the  sea.  Indeed,  as  some  of  them  conceived, 
it  was  the  sea  itself  that  somewhere  on  a  faraway  coast 
broke  into  the  land  and  gave  rise  to  the  river,  the  salt  of 
the  ocean  becoming  tasteless  in  the  lengthy  filter  of  the 
xiver's  course. 

Some  guessed  that  it  ran  from  the  South  Pole.  Another 
faction  attributed  it  to  a  common  source ;  a  secret  cavity 
somewhere  in  the  center  of  the  globe,  to  which  all  waters 
tended  and  from  which  all  rivers  were  fed. 

The  African  king,  Juba  II,  guessed  that  the  germ  of  the 
Nile  first  appeared  on  a  mountain  of  Mauretania  near  the 
Atlantic,  in  a  stream  that  wandered  south,  and  east,  and 
eventually  north,  sinking  several  times  in  the  sands  of 
the  Sahara  and  elsewhere,  and  as  often  reappearing, 
sometimes  a  thousand  miles  away,  as  various  lakes  and 
rivers,  one  of  which  was  the  Niger,  until,  after  its  last 
disappearance,  it  came  up  to  be  known  as  the  Nile  and  to 
29 


450  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

remain  above  ground  for  the  rest  of  its  course,  the  whole 
of  which  apparently  formed  three  quarters  of  an  ellipse. 

As  the  brook  of  the  Mauretania  mountain  Spring  ran 
into  a  lake  that  contained  crocodiles  and  three  sorts  of 
fish  that  were  also  found  in  the  Nile,  Juba's  theory  was 
adopted  by  many  of  the  best  geographers;  for  the  con- 
vincement  of  such  as  might  have  doubted  even  a  king,  a 
specimen  crocodile  from  the  Atlantic  lake  was  preserved, 
consecrated  and  exhibited  in  a  temple  of  Isis,  about  the 
beginning  of  the  present  era. 

How  far  away  the  Spring  was,  or  how  long  the  river 
was,  apparently  no  one  attempted  to  guess  until  about 
139  A.D.  when  the  Egyptian  geographer  Ptolemy,  as  if 
juggling  with  the  law  of  averages,  guessed  the  Spring  to 
be  in  a  southern  latitude  that  may  yet  prove  to  be  the 
actual  site — and  the  most  wonderful  guess  of  antiquity. 

The  surmise  was  said  to  have  been  based  on  reports 
made  in  50  a.d.  by  a  merchant  named  Diogenes,  and  it 
might  be  hoped  that  the  light  he  shed  on  the  Nile  Spring's 
true  whereabouts  may  add  additional  luster  to  that  name 
of  seekers  after  truth,  when  the  number  of  different 
designations  given  by  successive  discoverers  to  the  same 
bodies  of  water  is  finally  reduced  to  one. 

While  all  the  rest  of  the  world  admitted  that  the  source 
of  the  Nile  was  unknown,  Egypt  was  calling  a  spot  near 
the  modern  Assuan,  "The  Springs  of  the  Nile";  this  was, 
however,  little  better  than  an  egotistic  Egyptian  pun  on 
the  annual  rise  of  the  river,  which  was  first  observed  at 
that  place  in  Egypt  after  the  Nile  had  crossed  the  fron- 
tier from  Ethiopia. 

Wearied  with  walking  and  glutted  with  guessing,  man- 
kind then  rested  for  a  long  time  under  the  impression 
that  all-powerful  Nature  had  willed  it  that  men  should 
forever  wonder  but  never  know  where  the  river  rose; 


EGYPT  451 

and  for  the  larger  part  of  two  thousand  years  men  did 
actually  wonder  in  ignorance.  And  then,  what  with 
alleged  discoveries  about  the  White  Nile  and  about  the 
Blue  Nile,  mankind  at  large  remained  still  more  or  less 
in  the  dark  that  always  results  from  the  combination  of 
those  two  colors,  and  had  but  a  hazy  idea  about  where 
the  first  drops  of  the  river's  current  came  out  of  the  earth ; 
for  it  was  not  until  1875  when  Stanley  circumnavigated 
Lake  Victoria  Nyanza  which  Capt.  Speke  had  discovered 
in  1858,  that  the  near  neighborhood  of  the  source  of  the 
Nile  was  reached.  In  the  next  forty  years  more  progress 
was  made  in  tracking  the  river  to  its  lair  than  in  the  pre- 
vious forty  centuries. 

In  1889  Stanley  located  the  source  in  four-mile  high, 
snow-capped  mountains  that  made  the  Semliki  River, 
though  that  stream  is  merely  the  connecting  link  between 
two  nyanzas  or  lakes,  Albert  Nyanza  and  Albert  Edward 
Nyanza. 

In  the  year  19 14,  however,  it  was  generally  accepted 
that  the  Nile  starts  as  a  little  stream,  near  lat.  3  degrees, 
45  min.  south,  and  Ion.  29  degrees,  50  min.  east,  that 
rises  approximately  a  mile  and  a  quarter  above  sea  level, 
in  the  northern  tract  of  the  mountains  that  border  the 
northeast  side  of  Lake  Tanganyika  of  Central  Africa. 

Of  the  leading  atlases  of  19 14  that  best  depict  this 
region,  the  one  giving  the  most  detail  is  Andree's.  It 
shows  with  delightful  German  minuteness  what  a  magni- 
fying glass  discloses  to  be  a  blue  speck  labeled  the  Nile 
Spring  (Nil-Quelle),  from  which  runs  a  twisting  hairline 
(the  Lavironza  River  of  others)  that  becomes  (or  accord- 
ing to  others  joins  the  Ravuvu  River  and  becomes)  the 
Kagera  River  that  Stanley  named  the  Alexandra  Nile; 
the  Kagera  enters  the  western  side  of  Victoria  Nyanza 
which,  through  its  sole  outlet,  the  Nil  (the  Victoria  or 


452  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

Somerset  Nile)  feeds  Kioga  (Ibrahim)  Lake,  from  which 
Albert  Nyanza  is  formed ;  out  of  the  latter  runs  the  River 
Bar-el- Jebel  which  expands  into  Lake  No  to  accommo- 
date the  Gazelle  River,  and  together  they  issue  from 
Lake  No,  transmuted  into  the  White  Nile. 

The  Blue  Nile  rises  in  Abyssinia  at  ii  degrees  north 
lat.,  37  degrees  east  Ion.,  and  joins  the  White  Nile  at 
Assuan,  from  which  place,  with  no  nominal  distinction 
as  to  color,  they  flow  united  as  the  Nile  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean. But  it  is  the  sediment,  which  gives  the  Blue 
Nile  its  color  and  name,  that  the  consolidated  river  fur- 
nishes to  fertilize  the  Egyptian  farmers*  fields. 

The  Nile's  trip  covers  a  few  leagues  more  than  4000 
miles,  and  the  river  makes  it  in  about  two  months ;  but 
the  discovery  progressed  at  the  rate  of  only  a  mile  a  year 
in  the  journey  to  the  southernmost  source. 

Herodotus;  II.  19. 

Ovid;  Meta.  II.  line  253. 

Athenasus;  VIII.  35- 

Lucan;  Pharsalia.  X.  line  40-326  . 


The  Well  of  Syene 

The  town  of  Syene  is  known  to  everyone  who  has  heard 
of  the  syenite  stone  to  which  its  quarries  gave  name ;  but 
its  Well  is  perhaps  seldom  mentioned  outside  of  scientific 
circles,  in  which  it  has  always  been  famous  for  having 
shown  that  the  sun  was  vertical  there  at  the  summer 
solstice,  and  that  consequently  the  Tropic  of  Cancer 
crossed  the  town. 

This  geographical  truth  was  found  at  the  bottom  of  the 
Well  of  Syene  when  someone  noticed  there  what  few 
have  ever  seen  in  any  other  deep  Well — a  picture  of  the 


EGYPT  453 

midday  sun  reflected  from  the  surface  of  the  water  in  its 
depths. 

It  was  not  strictly  an  absolute  truth,  as  one  four- 
hundredth  of  an  up  and  down  object's  shadow  might  still 
have  been  noted  there  at  noon,  but  the  heavily  handi- 
capped geographers  of  old  may  be  cheerfully  pardoned  for 
not  noticing  so  small  a  fractional  error. 

The  assistance  that  the  Well  of  Syene  thus  gave  to 
the  scientists  is  however  expected  to  be  immeasurably 
exceeded  by  the  boon  that  Syene's  later  and  larger 
reservoir  of  water  is  relied  upon  to  confer  on  all  of  the 
people  in  the  lower  Nile  valley;  for  the  great  two  mile 
long  dam  at  Assuan  that  was  completed  in  1902  was  con- 
structed to  lay  forever  the  two  terrible  specters  of 
Drought  and  Famine  that  have  menaced  the  Egyptians 
from  time  to  time  since  long  before  the  days  of  Joseph, 
and  the  shortage  of  grain  that  followed  the  dream  about 
the  lean  kine,  and  the  river's  failure  to  overflow  the  fields. 

Assuan,  the  modern  name  of  Syene,  is  774  miles  from 
the  mouths  of  the  Nile,  and  its  dam  was  designed  to 
conserve  water  that  would  ordinarily  go  to  waste,  so  that 
a  larger  acreage  than  ever  before  might  be  irrigated,  in 
addition  to  controlling  a  reserve  supply  for  use  in  years  of 
insufficient  rainfall. 

There  was  another  very  ancient  and  useful  Well 
opposite  Syene  in  the  island  of  Elephantina.  It  was  on 
the  banks  of  the  Nile,  and  was  built  of  close-fitting  stones 
on  which  lines  were  drawn  marking  the  greatest,  least, 
and  mean  risings  of  the  Nile,  whose  waters  flowed  into 
and  formed  the  Well,  so  that  its  surface  was  always  level 
with  the  river's;  and  from  records  of  the  dates  of  previous 
years'  levels  it  was  possible  to  make  forecasts  of  the 
height  the  river  would  probably  reach  in  the  current 
season. 


454  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

This  Well  was  called  the  Nilometer,  and  was  similar 
to  one  at  Memphis  which  was  used  for  the  same  purpose. 

Strabo;  XVII.  i.     §48. 


Blackthorn  Spring 

The  Blackthorn  Spring  was  in  the  vicinity  of  Thebes, 
in  a  piece  of  woodland  about  thirty-seven  miles  from  the 
Nile,  and  it  watered  a  grove  of  Blackthorn  trees,  the 
wood  of  which  was  valued  for  ship-building;  the  flowers 
for  the  beauty  their  colors  added  to  garlands;  and  its 
gum  for  various  uses.  The  Blackthorn  of  the  Spring  is 
supposed  to  be  the  Acacia  which  produces  the  modern 
Gum  Arabic. 

Thebes  was  the  No  Amon  of  the  Bible  and  was  in  its 
prime  centuries  before  the  Trojan  war. 

There  is  an  unfinished  discussion  as  to  whether  Thebes 
or  Memphis  was  the  older,  but  as  they  were  both  founded 
by  the  first  mortal  monarch,  Menes,  the  difference  may 
perhaps  be  measured  in  months. 

The  city  was  said  to  have  had  seven  million  inhabitants 
and  its  army  of  six  hundred  thousand  gained,  among 
other  tributaries,  peoples  as  far  away  as  the  Colchians 
on  the  Caspian  Sea. 

The  Thebans  erected  a  statue  of  the  god  Toth,  the 
inventor  of  letters,  and  one  of  his  wife.  The  Chinese 
claim  to  have  invented  the  characters  of  writing  as  well 
as  the  art  of  printing,  and  there  is  no  more  reason  to 
doubt  that  they  devised  their  own  peculiar  and  numerous 
signs  for  words  than  there  is  to  question  their  statement 
that  the  marks  are  copies  of  the  tracks  left  by  flocks  of 
birds  on  a  certain  seashore. 


EGYPT  455 

It  is  not  denied  that  birds  taught  men  how  to  sing, 
but  a  frank  avowal  that  birds  were  their  first  writing 
masters  is  made  only  by  the  Chinese  and  the  Romans, 
the  latter's  Mercury,  the  counterpart  of  Toth  and  the 
inventor  of  their  alphabet,  having  copied  the  flight  of 
cranes  when  forming  his  characters. 

Several  nations,  however,  seem  to  have  secretly  con- 
veyed, in  a  symbol,  the  admission  of  a  debt  to  the  birds, 
the  Romans,  by  placing  a  rooster  beside  the  representa- 
tions of  their  inventor;  and  the  Egyptians  by  giving  Toth 
the  head  of  another  bird,  the  ibis,  which  is  also  the 
hieroglyph  of  his  name — indeed  nearly  a  fifth  of  the 
Egyptian  letters  were  pictures  of  birds. 

The  letters  that  Cadmus  carried  to  Greece  were  those 
made  by  the  Phoenician  god  Taaut,  who  was  probably 
the  same  as  the  maybe  older  Toth  of  the  Egyptians. 

No  peoples,  however,  except  the  Egyptians,  were 
gallant  enough  to  acknowledge  the  assistance  that  woman 
would  naturally  be  expected  to  have  been  anxious  to 
give  in  the  inventing  of  letters,  and  her  work  in  the 
achievement  was  chivalrously  proclaimed  by  the  The- 
bans  who  designated  their  statue  of  Toth's  wife  as  the 
Lady  of  Letters.  ,-<> 

The  dwellings  of  Thebes  were  four  and  five  stories 
high,  and  that  it  was  the  best  adorned  and  most  beautiful 
city  of  the  world  may  be  opined  from  age-old  descriptions 
of  its  numerous  palaces,  temples,  obelisks  and  statues. 
Temples  more  than  three  hundred  feet  long  were  sup- 
ported by  columns  nearly  twelve  feet  thick  and  seventy 
feet  high;  and  some  of  its  statues  were  more  than  nine 
times  life-size,  the  vocal  statue  of  Memnon,  and  its 
companion,  being  sixty  feet  high.  Fortunately,  however, 
one  is  not  required  to  rely  alone  on  the  ancient  estimates 
of  the  artistic  embellishments  of  Thebes,  for  numbers  of 


456  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

them  now  adorn  streets  and  parks  in  the  capital  cities  of 
the  world,  or  beautify  their  museums  and  galleries  of  art, 
and  their  glories  are  as  familiar  to  millions  today  as  they 
were  to  myriads  of  Thebans  in  their  prime;  though  per- 
haps Thebes'  share  in  producing  them  is  unknown  to 
many  beholders  to  whom  they  are  only  the  ruins  of  Kar- 
nak,  or  the  obelisk  of  Luxor  at  Paris,  or  that  on  the 
Thames  embankment  near  Blackfriars'  Bridge,  the  name 
of  Thebes  being  lost  in  the  designation  of  this  or  that 
village  of  nearly  a  dozen  that  have  sprouted  among  the 
ruins  of  the  old  metropolis  that  are  found  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  Spring  of  the  Blackthorn  grove. 

Pliny;  XIII.  19. 
Athenaeus;  IX.  43. 


326 

Memnon 

The  Memnonian  fountain  was  at  Abydos  in  the  palace 
of  Memnon,  the  ruins  of  which  are  supposed  to  be  those 
now  to  be  seen  at  the  hamlet  of  Mensieh. 

The  palace  was  built  on  the  plan  of  the  Labyrinth ;  it 
was  entirely  of  stone,  laid  in  a  singular  manner. 

The  fountain  was  within  the  palace  at  a  great  depth, 
and  was  reached  through  an  arched  passage  built  of  single 
stones  of  remarkable  size  and  workmanship. 

Menes,  the  first  mortal  monarch,  was  born  at  Abydos; 
and  Osiris  was  buried  there,  in  consequence  of  which  the 
place  was  selected  as  a  cemetery  by  prominent  Egyptians 
in  order  that  their  remains  might  repose  in  the  company 
of  the  great  god.  Herodotus  considered  him  the  Egyptian 
Bacchus;  others  called  him  a  son  of  Rhea,  and,  as  such, 
he  was  either  a  brother  of  Zeus  or,  Zeus  himself.  Perhaps 
the  most  simple  solution  of  the  perplexity  is,  that  Osiris 


EGYPT  457 

occupied  among  the  Egyptian  gods  the  position  that  Zeus 
held  among  the  Grecian  deities. 

The  father  of  Rameses  the  Great  is  supposed  to  have 
constructed  the  palace,  and  also  a  neighboring  temple  of 
Osiris,  in  which  was  discovered,  in  1818,  the  Tablet  of 
Abydos,  a  list  of  Egyptian  kings,  that  is  valued  as  the 
most  precious  document  that  has  come  down  to  modern 
times  regarding  perhaps  the  oldest  country  in  the  world. 

Memnon  has  been  identified  with  a  number  of  promi- 
nent people,  including  Ham  the  son  of  Noah,  and  the 
Egyptian  King  Amenophis.  As  the  son  of  Tithonus,  he 
was  killed  by  Achilles  at  Troy,  and  a  river  called  Paphla- 
gonios  was  produced  by  the  flow  from  his  wounds. 
Tithonus  was  granted  unending  life,  but  having  failed  to 
ask  for  the  absolutely  essential  accompaniment  of  con- 
tinuous youth,  he  shriveled  up  as  he  grew  old,  so  that 
finally  little  was  left  of  him  but  a  shell  and  a  voice; 
whereupon  he  was  mercifully  and  appropriately  changed 
into  a  cricket. 

The  grief  of  Memnon's  mother,  Eos,  more  widely 
known  as  Aurora,  or,  the  Dawn,  is  the  most  enduring 
sorrow  that  has  ever  been  described,  for  her  mourning 
never  ceased,  and  well-informed  early  risers  are  reminded 
of  it  by  the  dewdrops,  which  are  the  tears  she  still  con- 
tinues to  shed  in  her  nightly  lamentations. 

It  is  not  stated  that  this  was  a  salt  water  fountain,  but 
it  is  said  that  along  the  road  to  the  temple  there  were  a 
number  of  salt  Springs  bubbling  up,  and  a  vast  number  of 
salt  beds,  and  of  mussel,  oyster  and  scallop  shells, — 
deposits,  it  was  supposed,  of  an  ocean  that  covered  this 
land  before  the  waters  of  the  Mediterranean  broke 
through  a  barrier,  at  the  Strait  of  Gibraltar,  and  ran 
out  into  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  which  was  then  at  a  lower 
level  than  the  Mediterranean. 


458  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

Some  of  the  ruins  of  Abydos  are  near  the  Arab  village 
of  Arabat  el  Matfoon. 

Strabo;  XVII.  i.     §42. 

Strabo;  I.  3.     5  4. 

Ovid;  Meta.  XIII.  line  575.  et  seq. 


The  Wells  of  Apis 
(The  Fountains  of  the  Priests) 

There  were  two  or  more  Wells  of  Apis ;  one,  from  which 
his  drinking  water  was  provided,  at  Memphis;  the  others, 
sometimes  called  the  fountains  of  the  Priests,  were  his 
burial  places,  and  their  locations  were  known  only  to  the 
initiated. 

The  Golden  Calf  that  the  children  of  Israel  adored  was 
not  regarded  with  more  veneration  than  Apis,  who  was 
the  sacred  Bull  worshiped  by  the  Egyptians,  and  was 
supposed  to  represent  a  reincarnation  of  the  god  Osiris. 

He  was  maintained  at  Memphis  in  a  court  surrounded 
by  a  colonnade  full  of  sculptured  figures  and  statues 
forming  the  pillars  of  a  Piazza,  a  part  of  the  sacred  pre- 
cincts being  reserved  for  the  use  of  his  mother. 

There  were  two  temples  in  his  recreation  court  where 
he  appeared  from  time  to  time,  attended  by  a  choir  of 
boys  who  sang  hymns  in  his  honor,  and  where  he  gave 
ocular  responses  to  inquirers  who  judged  whether  fate 
was  propitious  or  the  contrary,  either,  from  his  going 
into  one  of  the  temples  or  the  other;  or,  from  his  taking 
food  from  their  hands,  or  refusing  so  to  do. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-five  Apis  was  drowned  in  one  of 
the  secret  Wells  or  fountains  of  the  Priests,  and  the  coun- 
try was  carefully  searched  to  secure  his  successor,  if  he 
had  not  previously  been  discovered. 


EGYPT 


459 


There  were  twenty-nine  features  by  which  the  right- 
ful successor  of  the  drowned  Apis  was  to  be  distinguished 
and  verified,  although  the  principal  one,  that  of  pedigree, 
was  itself  of  such  phenomenal  character  that  the  other 
twenty-eight  might  almost  have  been  taken  for  granted 
when  any  animal  had  been  found  with  the  pedigree 
required. 

This  condition  pedigree  was  that  of  an  only  calf,  the 
issue  of  lightning  with  a  cow  that  could  never  have  other 
progeny. 

Some  of  the  other  features  for  distinguishing  the  calf, 
and  guaranteeing  the  connection  with  Osiris,  were; — a 
predominating  black  color ;  a  square  spot  of  white  on  the 
forehead ;  a  peculiar  figure  on  the  right  side  in  the  form  of 
a  white  crescent ;  a  representation  of  an  eagle  on  its  back ; 
double  hairs  in  the  tail ;  and  a  peculiar  growth  that  was 
called  a  beetle,  under  the  tongue. 

The  founding  of  Memphis  has  been  assigned  to  the 
year  4455  B.C.  and  is  credited  to  the  first  mortal  monarch, 
Menes,  who  was,  however,  preceded  by  lines  of  prehistoric 
kings  who  ruled  for  18,000  years  prior  to  his  birth. 

Ancient  authors  eulogized  the  magnificence  of  Mem- 
phis, and  its  ruins  were  graphically  described  by  an 
Arabian  writer  in  the  Xlllth  century;  after  that  they 
were  forgotten  until  500  years  later  when,  their  location 
having  become  unknown,  they  were  rediscovered  on  the 
banks  of  the  Nile,  south  and  within  ten  miles  of  Cairo, 
which  was  built  in  638  A. D.  with  wreckage  from  its  ruins. 

The  canals  and  the  pyramids  tell  in  two  words  what  the 
Egyptian  engineers  could  accomplish,  but  no  one,  even 
2500  years  ago,  could  say  what  means  they  employed  to 
raise  and  transport  masses  weighing  very  nearly  a  thou- 
sand tons. 

The  Egyptian  obelisk  in  New  York  weighs  only  70 


466  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

tons,  but  XlXth  century  engineers  of  the  year  1881  re- 
quired several  weeks  to  move  it  three  miles  on  land  with 
the  aid  of  steam  power,  while  the  Egyptian  engineers 
moved  masses  twelve  times  as  heavy  and  transported 
them  many  miles  farther  from  the  quarries  to  their 
present  sites ;  one  of  those  masses  at  Thebes  was  a  statue 
of  Rameses  II  carved  out  of  a  single  block  of  syenite,  the 
feet  of  which,  though  more  than  three  and  a  half  yards 
long  and  one  and  a  half  yards  wide,  are  perfectly  propor- 
tioned for  a  man  75  feet  tall,  such  as  the  statue  repre- 
sented. Works  of  almost  equal  magnitude  at  Memphis 
are  the  colossal  statues  of  Sesostris,  his  wife  and  four 
sons,  of  different  heights  that  range  from  30  to  50  feet. 

After  seeing  the  marvels  the  Memphis  builders  per- 
formed, it  is  difficult  to  select  instances  in  which  modern 
members  of  their  profession  have  shown  greater  ability, 
and  one  is  quite  prepared  to  believe  that  Memphis  had 
subways  before  Rome  had  elevators,  for  the  statement 
that  Memphis  was  built  on  arches,  under  which  its  armies 
could  pass  out  of  the  city  without  being  seen,  may  be 
taken  as  a  very  terse  description  of  not  only  large  but 
even  numerous  subways. 

Memphis  was  called  the  City  of  the  Pyramids,  and 
within  a  few  miles  of  it  some  thirty  of  them,  including 
the  largest  and  most  celebrated,  are  still  to  be  found  more 
or  less  well  preserved,  and  with  the  Sphinx  among  them ; 
but  earthquakes,  the  elements,  the  destruction  of  enemies, 
the  requirements  of  other  cities'  builders,  and  the  zeal 
of  collectors,  have  worked  havoc  with  all  but  the  most 
gigantic  parts  of  Memphis,  and  it  is  now  difficult  to 
identify  the  Wells  of  Apis,  or  even  the  site  of  his  temples, 
among  the  numerous  heaps  of  shattered  stone  around  the 
little  palm-shaded  village  of  Matranieh,  which  represents 
the  old  city  with  its  circuit  of  fifteen  miles. 


EGYPT  461 

But,  from  numbers  of  granite  caskets  containing 
embalmed  bodies  of  bulls  that  have  been  found  outside 
of  the  city,  in  a  rock-cut  gallery  many  hundred  feet  long 
and  twenty  feet  high  and  wide,  it  may  be  judged  that  the 
remains  of  the  pampered  animals  were  all  carefully  pre- 
served after  they  had  been  drowned  in  the  sacred  Wells. 

Pliny;  VIII.  71. 
Herodotus;  III.  27. 


328 

Pyramid  Well 

In  the  interior  of  the  largest  pyramid  there  was  a  Well 
eighty-six  cubits  deep,  which  was  believed  to  be  con- 
nected with  the  River  Nile. 

The  shaft  of  this  Well  is  now  thought  to  have  been 
made  to  give  the  workmen  a  quick  exit  from  the  pyramid 
to  the  ground, 

Pliny;  XXXVI.  17. 


Marea 

The  fountain  called  Marea  took  its  name  from  Maro, 
one  of  the  companions  of  Bacchus. 

The  district  about  the  fountain  produced  a  popular 
wine  that,  in  recognition  of  the  Spring's  irrigation,  was 
called  Mareotic  Wine. 

The  district  was  in  the  vicinity  of  Alexandria  and  of 
Lake  Mareotis,  to  which  the  fountain  may  have  con- 
tributed more  than  its  waters. 

Athenaeus;  I.  60. 


462  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

330 
Cairo 

There  was  a  fountain  where  Cairo  was  afterwards 
founded,  near  which  there  was  a  temple  of  Neptune;  its 
waters  changed  from  salt  to  sweet,  and  the  reason  was 
because  of  the  many  thunderbolts  that  fell  about  it. 

Athensus;  II.  is- 


331 

Rhacotis 

Rhacotis  was  the  name  of  a  spot  that  always  retained 
that  designation,  even  after  it  became  a  section  of  the 
city  of  Alexandria. 

In  the  days  when  it  was  only  a  spot  in  the  wastes, 
between  Lake  Mareotis  and  the  sea,  it  was  the  station  of 
a  solitary  Egyptian  guard  that  the  government  posted 
there  to  keep  foreigners  from  landing,  and  from  ascending 
the  western  branch  of  the  Nile. 

The  Springs  of  Rhacotis  no  doubt  located  the  station 
and  supplied  water  for  the  guard  and  the  few  herdsmen 
of  the  neighborhood,  who,  on  occasion  assisted  him  in 
repelling  trespassers. 

A  mile  out  in  the  sea,  on  the  southern  side  of  the  island 
of  Pharos,  lay  "Pirates'  Haven,"  another  lonely  spot 
that  was  the  lurking  place  of  Greek  and  Phoenician  cor- 
sairs on  the  watch  for  suitable  prey  among  passing  ships. 

The  military  character,  as  well  as  the  name  of  the 
spot,  continued  even  after  Alexandria  had  spread  her 
numerous  palaces  over  the  wastes,  for  the  old  guard's 
station  became  the  site  of  the  city's  arsenal. 

The  Springs  having  become  brackish,  and  being  more- 
over  inadequate   for   the   growing   population,    water, 


EGYPT  463 

brought  from  the  River  Nile  through  an  aqueduct,  was 
used  in  their  place. 

Hirtius;  Alexandrine  War;  c.  S. 
Strabo;XVII.  i.    8  6, 


Pharos 

The  island  of  Pharos  was  a  small  oblong  that  protruded 
from  the  sea,  seven  furlongs  from  the  coast  of  Egypt  and 
half  a  day's  sail  from  the  western,  the  Canopic  mouth  of 
the  Nile. 

About  the  island  there  were  shallows  and  rocks,  some 
under  the  water  and  some  above  it,  that  made  the  neigh- 
borhood a  menace  to  navigators  bound  for  any  of  the 
river's  seven  arms  that  formed  the  delta;  and  therefore 
in  early  times  the  Pharos,  a  tower  admirably  constructed 
of  white  marble,  and  several  stories  high,  the  most  cele- 
brated lighthouse  of  ancient  nights,  was  built  on  the 
northeast  end  of  the  island  where  doubtless  part  of  it 
still  remains  in  the  tower  that  now  takes  its  place. 

The  island  nevertheless  had  attractions  that  were  well 
known  to  seamen  of  every  land,  even  in  the  days  of 
Homer;  these  were  its  fresh  and  limpid  Springs,  which 
were  eagerly  visited  by  sailors  when  their  water  had  run 
short  during  passages  lengthened  out  by  weak  or  adverse 
winds. 

Later  on,  this  island  was  no  less  eagerly  sought  by 
landsmen  and  all  who  were  thirsty  for  knowledge,  for  it 
stood  before  the  doors  of  the  largest  and  most  valuable 
library  of  those  days,  the  library  of  Alexandria. 

Gauged  by  the  age  of  native  cities  in  Egypt,  Alexan- 
dria was  a  place  of  no  antiquity ;  even  five  hundred  years 
after  its  founding  it  was  spoken  of  as  built  only  yesterday ; 


-#4  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

it  was  not  founded  until  332  B.C.  when  Alexander  the 
Great,  struck  with  the  breakwater  value  of  the  island,  and 
its  strategic  importance  as  commanding  the  western 
mouths  of  the  Nile,  drew,  himself,  a  plan  for  a  coastal 
city  which  in  time  was  outranked  by  Rome  alone.  But 
Alexander's  body  reposed  in  a  gold  coffin,  and  succeeding 
monarchs  and  architects  passed  away  before  the  enter- 
prise was  completed.  Its  two  principal  streets,  two 
hundred  feet  wide  and  crossing  each  other  at  right  angles, 
perhaps  symmetrically  reproduced  two  lines  that  Alex- 
ander breezily  dashed  off  and  handed  to  the  architect 
as  his  plan  for  the  city. 

For  the  gold  coffin,  Ptolemy  Sotor  II  substituted  a 
more  modest  casket  of  alabaster;  but,  as  the  chronicle 
says,  it  did  him  no  good,  for  he  was  almost  immediately 
deposed. 

The  island  of  Pharos  was  connected  to  the  coast  by 
filling  in  the  intervening  ocean  with  a  mole,  and  mole 
and  island  were  both  built  upon  and  became  part  of  the 
city. 

When  Alexandria  had  reached  the  rank  of  second  city 
in  the  world,  its  commerce  produced  five  million  dollars 
a  year  in  port  dues  alone,  and  it  contained  4000  palaces, 
4000  public  baths,  400  theaters,  and  12,000  groceries, 
represented  by  herb  sellers. 

The  library  was  the  first  public  institution  of  its  kind 
established  on  a  large  scale,  and  it  contained  the  cream 
of  the  oldest  literatures  in  700,000  volumes.  All  new 
books  that  were  brought  into  the  country  were  officially 
borrowed,  copied  or  translated,  and  laid  in  the  library, 
the  importer,  in  some  cases,  receiving  only  the  copy. 

Following  this  custom,  the  Septuagint  version  of  the 
Bible  was  translated  on  Pharos  for  the  library's  shelves. 

The  collection  was  injured  during  Caesar's  besiegement 


EGYPT  465 

in  47  B.C.,  and  again  in  273  a.d.,  and  in  389 :  it  was  totally- 
destroyed  by  the  Arabs  in  640,  and  learning  then  sus- 
tained an  irreparable  loss  in  every  department.  In  the 
ashes  of  the  conflagration  lie  all  that  is  left  to  the  world 
of  peoples  of  whom  nothing  can  now  be  known;  and 
science  and  the  arts  sorrow  with  history  in  their  own 
bereavements,  for  the  loss  of  the  records  of  the  experience, 
the  discoveries,  the  formulas,  and  the  secrets,  in  chemis- 
try, mechanics  and  other  lines,  that  had  accumulated 
during  innumerable  centuries  has  caused  other  centuries 
of  extra  labor  and  research,  much  of  which  is  still  without 
result;  work  that  would  have  produced  something  new 
if  it  had  not  perforce  been  diverted  to  finding  out  some- 
thing that  was  old  thousands  of  years  ago,  such,  among 
hundreds  of  instances,  as  the  process  for  producing  un- 
fading paints,  and  for  making  malleable  glass.  ,-/, 
The  limpid  Springs  that  served  a  ship's  crew  amply 
were  utterly  unable  to  meet  the  demands  of  a  growing 
city,  and  an  aqueduct  was  therefore  built  and  conveyed 
water  from  the  Nile  to  Pharos  and  all  other  parts  of 
Alexandria.     (See  No.  410a.) 

Homer;  Odyssey.    Bk.  IV. 


333 
The  Bitter  Springs 

The  Bitter  Springs  were  the  private  property  of  the 
Egyptian  kings,  who  derived  a  considerable  revenue 
from  the  alkaline  salts  obtained  from  the  lakes  that  the 
Springs  produced ;  salts  that  were  used  in  numerous  ways ; 
in  making  pottery,  in  the  kitchen  and  at  table,  and  in  the 
ancient  substitute  for  cold  storage — the  curing  of  meat 
and  fish. 
30 


466  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

There  are  few  fountains  in  all  the  world  that  the  eye 
of  the  public  passes  more  often  than  it  passes  these  very- 
old  bitter  Springs,  for  the  lakes  they  form  are  a  part  of 
the  channel  of  the  canal  that  was  dug  by  Sesostris  before 
the  time  of  Troy,  the  one  now  called  the  Suez  Canal. 

When  in  this  ancient  enterprise  more  than  half  of  it 
had  been  completed,  the  work  was  stopped  at  the  Bitter 
Springs;  not  because  it  had,  even  then,  cost  the  lives  of 
120,000  laborers,  but  owing  to  the  discovery  that  the 
surface  of  the  Red  Sea  was  four  and  a  half  feet  higher 
than  the  land  in  the  interior  of  Egypt,  and  a  consequent 
fear  of  inundation.  The  stoppage,  however,  was  but 
temporary;  the  lock  system  was  devised  to  obviate  the 
danger  and  the  work,  sixty-two  miles  long,  was  completed 
and  connected  the  Nile  at  Bubastis  with  the  Red  Sea  at 
Arsinoe,  the  present  Suez. 

In  the  course  of  time,  accumulations  of  sand  blocked 
up  the  channel,  although  it  was  thirty  feet  deep,  but  it 
was  reopened  by  Trajan  in  the  lid  century.  Some  six 
hundred  years  later  the  canal  was  again  choked  up,  and 
it  remained  useless  until  De  Lesseps  redug  it,  and  opened 
it  on  the  i6th  of  November,  1869,  having  straightened 
the  course  by  running  it  northward  to  the  Mediterranean 
from  the  Bitter  Springs  from  which  it  formerly  turned 
westward  and  ran  to  the  Nile. 

The  perfection  the  science  of  engineering  had  reached 
among  the  Egyptians  nearly  5000  years  ago  is  strikingly 
shown  in  this  wonderful  undertaking,  not  only  in  the 
application  of  the  lock  device  to  meet  the  difference  in 
water  levels,  but  in  the  matter  of  the  water  level  itself. 
Napoleon  considered  the  scheme  of  connecting  the  Red 
and  the  Mediterranean  Seas,  but  abandoned  the  idea 
when  his  engineers  computed  that  there  was  a  difference 
of  thirty  feet  in  the  water  levels. 


EGYPT  467 

There  is  in  fact  no  difference  at  all.  But  there  is  a 
variation  in  the  tide,  which  rises  six  feet  six  inches  in  the 
south,  but  only  one  foot  six  inches  in  the  Mediterranean 
at  Port  Said.  Thus  the  actual  net  difference  of  five  feet 
is  within  six  inches  of  what  the  Egyptian  engineers,  of 
before  the  time  of  Troy,  calculated  it  to  be  when  they 
stopped  operations  long  enough  to  work  out  a  scheme  to 
meet  the  emergency. 

When  the  old  canal  was  opened,  using,  as  now,  the 
Bitter  Springs  lakes,  but  connecting  with  the  Nile  direct, 
the  water  of  the  river  modified  the  saltiness  of  the  lakes 
to  such  an  extent  that  they  became  the  haunts  of  fresh 
water  fish  and  aquatic  fowl;  an  upcreep  of  water  that, 
though  noted  twenty-five  hundred  years  ago,  much  sur- 
prised the  people  at  Panama  when  it  was  reproduced  in 
the  high  level  lake  of  the  Panama  Canal. 

These  Springs  are  sometimes  called  Pontes  Amari. 

Pliny;  VI.  33-     Strabo;  XVII.  i.     $  25. 
Herodotus:  II.  157. 


334 
Tatnos 

The  fountain  of  Tatnos  was  at  Myoshormos  north  of 
Berenice. 

The  town  was  on  the  shore  of  the  Red  Sea,  and  its 
name  is  taken  to  mean  either  the  Harbor  of  the  Mouse,  or, 
of  the  Mussel ;  its  remains  are  supposed  to  be  those  now 
seen  near  Abuschaar. 

Berenice  was  east  of  Syene,  in  the  same  latitude,  and 
on  the  Red  Sea  at  the  boundary  of  Egypt  and  Ethiopia. 
It  was  one  of  the  most  popular  points  of  departure  for 
ships  sailing  to  India,  and  those  who  doubled  their  invest- 
ments in  the  trade  made  no  attempt  to  minimize  the 


468,  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

terrors  with  which  the  route  was  infested.  Their  accounts 
were  well  calculated  to  deter  intending  competitors  from 
exposing  themselves  to  the  stifling  heats,  or  risking  en- 
counters with  pirates  and  hideous  peoples,  some  of  them 
covered  all  over  with  long  hair,  except  their  heads;  or  the 
even  more  dreadful  monsters  of  the  tropic  seas — giant 
turtles  so  large  that  one  shell  served  as  the  roof  for  a 
whole  family  among  the  Chelonophagi ;  and  savage  sea 
serpents  that  were  thirty  feet  long;  and  whales  that 
measured  seventy-five  feet;  all  of  which  had  to  be  met 
while  the  ships  were  being  maneuvered  in  the  midst  of 
furious  tempests. 

Pliny;  VI.  33.  24,  26,  28.  37. 
Strabo;  XVI.  4-     5  S- and  3- 5  7- 


ETHIOPIA 

335 
The  Fountain  of  Health 

The  fountain  of  Health  was  in  the  country  of  the 
Ethiopian  Macrobii,  who,  by  using  its  waters  Hved  to  the 
age  of  120  years,  and  often  even  longer.  ' 

The  fountain  gave  forth  the  odor  of  violets,  and  the' 
water  was  so  light  that  nothing  would  float  upon  it,  ■ 
neither  wood,  nor  substances  more  buoyant  than  wood 
itself. 

Those  who  washed  with  the  water  were  made  as  sleek 
as  if  they  had  been  oiled. 

The  Macrobii  were  the  tallest  and  the  handsomest  of 
the  Ethiopians,  and  they  lived  at  the  limits  of  the 
habitable  world  in  the  south,  while  a  nation  of  the 
same  name,  among  the  Hyperboreans,  lived  at  the  north- 
ern extremity  of  the  world,  and  reached  the  age  of  looo 

y^^^S.  aJobowH 

According  to  the  custom  of  the  Macrobii,  the  reigning 
family  could  secure  its  succession  in  rulership  only 
through  a  diligent  cultivation  of  physical  uplift ;  men  rose 
to  kingship  neither  through  popularity  nor  by  heredity; 
stature  and  strength  were  the  sole  qualifications  that 
were  considered  in  determining  the  succession  of  rulers, 
and,  when  the  reigning  monarch  had  reached  the  limits  of 
his  age,  the  tallest  and  strongest  man  in  the  community 
received  the  crown. 

469 


470  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

Their  sepulchres  were  hollow  columns  of  transparent 
crystal,  in  the  center  of  which  were  placed  those  who  had 
reached  the  greatest  age  the  fountain  of  Health  could 
confer  on  them;  and  the  columns  were  then  set  up  as 
pillars,  at  first  in  the  houses  of  the  relatives,  and  after- 
wards in  the  outskirts  of  the  city. 

Cambyses,  having  heard  that  gold  among  the  Macrobii 
was  so  common  that  even  the  prisoners'  chains  were  made 
of  it,  personally  conducted  a  large  force  against  them. 
But  long  before  reaching  the  country  the  army's  provi- 
sions gave  out.  The  soldiers  then  subsisted  for  a  time  on 
the  beasts  of  burden,  and  afterwards  on  such  herbs  as 
they  could  gather;  and  it  was  not  until  it  came  to  the 
knowledge  of  Cambyses  that  the  men  were  living  on 
themselves  and  devouring  every  tenth  man  as  he  was 
selected  by  lot,  that  he  abandoned  his  object  and  turned 
back  to  his  starting  point,  Thebes,  which  he  reached  with 
a  very  small  residue  of  the  original  force. 

Perhaps  the  oiled  appearance  that  came  from  bathing 
with  the  water  of  the  fountain  has  misled  some  modern 
searchers  for  the  Spring,  but,  unless  it  has  lost  its  age- 
producing  virtue,  it  is  not  among  any  of  the  many  places 
that  have  so  far  been  assigned  to  it,  the  chief  of  which  are 
Kordofan,  Abyssinia  and  Somaliland. 

Herodotus;  III.  24. 


LiPARIS 

At  Liparis  there  was  a  Spring  that  was  used  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  oil. 

Pliny;  XXXI.     14. 


ETHIOPIA  471 

337 

TiSITIA 

There    was,    at    Tisitia,    a    fountain    that   emitted 
light. 

Pliny;  XXXI.     14. 


338 

The  Red  Fountain 

The  waters  of  the  Red  fountain  required  to  be  taken  in 
the  greatest  moderation,  as  otherwise  they  were  apt  to 
cause  dehrium. 

Pliny;  XXXI.     5- 


339 
Cucios 

The  Spring  of  Cucios  was  on  a  promontory  much 
resorted  to  by  mariners. 

The  promontory  was  apparently  south  of  an  unex- 
plored gulf  on  the  Ethiopian  coast. 

Pliny;  VI.  34. 


10 


ARABIA 

340 
Arabia 

There  was  a  certain  Spring  in  Arabia  that  gushed  up 
from  the  ground  with  such  remarkable  force  as  to  throw 
back  any  object  pressed  down  upon  it,  however  weighty. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  15. 


i^^NUSCABALES 

The  fountain  called  ^nuscabales  was  in  the  town, 
twenty  miles  from  a  mountain,  inhabited  by  the  Agacturi 
which  signifies  the  town  of  camels. 

Pliny;  VI.  32. 


342 
CORALIS 

The  fountain  of  Coralis  appears  to  have  been  on  the 
island  of  Devade,  in  the  Red  Sea. 

Pliny;  VI.  32. 

343-344 

Daulotos.     Dora 

The  fountains  of  Daulotos  and  Dora  were  in  the  island 
of  Dorice. 

472 


ARABIA  473 

This  was  perhaps  Strabo's  island  of  Doracta  in  the  Red 
Sea  in  lat.  17  degrees  N. 

Pliny;  VI.  32.     Strabo;  VI.  3.     5  7. 


345 
Arsinoe 

The  Springs  of  Arsinoe  came  from  a  high  rock  near  a 
red  colored  mountain  in  the  neighborhood  of  Arsinoe,  a 
town  on  the  western  coast  of  the  Red  Sea,  one  of  many 
towns  named  after  the  favorite  sister  of  Ptolemy  Phila- 
delphus. 

The  waters  were  hot,  salty  and  bitter,  and  dis- 
charged themselves  into  the  Red  Sea  opposite  Mt. 
Sinai. 

Strabo;  XVI.  4.     §  S. 


Red  Sea  Spring 

Ctesias  of  Cnidus  said  that  a  Spring  discharged  a  red 
and  ochrous  water  into  the  Red  Sea.  By  others,  the 
sea's  color  was  attributed  to  the  reflection  of  the  vertical 
sun ;  and  some  ascribed  it  to  the  reflection  of  the  surround- 
ing red  mountains ;  while  a  third  theory  was  that  both  the 
sun  and  the  mountains  had  a  share  in  causing  the  sea's 
distinctive  color. 

In  very  ancient  times,  the  Red  was  called  the  Ery- 
thraean Sea,  after  Erythras  the  son  of  Perseus. 

Strabo;  XVI.  4.    5  ao. 


474  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

347 
Seven  Wells 

iElius  Gallus  in  his  expedition  into  Arabia  stopped  at  a 
place  called  Seven  Wells  because  it  possessed  that  num- 
ber of  them. 

The  expedition  was  made  in  24  B.C.  by  order  of  Augus- 
tus whose  covetousness  was  aroused  by  reports  of  the 
great  wealth  of  Arabia,  through  which  the  valuable 
products  of  the  Far  East  reached  Italy,  and  where  even 
the  commonest  utensils  were  reported  to  be  made  of  the 
precious  metals,  and  studded  with  jewels. 

The  expedition  was  barren  of  results,  and  it  suffered 
great  hardships,  as  Gallus'  guides  purposely  misled  him, 
and  guided  him  in  roundabout  ways  for  six  months  to  a 
distance  from  which  he  was  able  to  return  in  a  third  of 
that  time,  after  suffering  intensely  from  want  of  water, 
and  losing  the  greater  part  of  his  soldiers  through  the  rav- 
ages of  a  disease  that  was  new  and  unknown  to  the 
Romans.  It  might  be  conjectured  that  these  were  the 
two  large  and  five  small  Biblical  Wells  of  Beer-Sheba, 
near  which  Abraham  at  one  period  had  his  residence. 

Strabo;  XVI.  4.     5  34- 


Petra 

Petra  was  surrounded  with  a  natural  fortification  of 
precipitous  rock,  within  which  there  were  abundant 
Springs  that  were  used  for  all  domestic  purposes,  and  for 
irrigating  the  gardens. 

The  inhabitants  stored  quantities  of  water  in  vast 
underground  reservoirs  cut  in  the  rock;  these  were  in 
some  cases  lOO  feet  square  though  the  openings  were 


ARABIA  475 

made  very  small,  so  that  when  the  people  were  attacked, 
and  fled  to  the  wilderness  as  was  their  custom,  they  could 
easily  conceal  the  openings  from  their  enemies. 

Their  favorite  drink  was  made  by  mixing  pepper  and 
wild  honey  with  the  water. 

Petra  was  about  three  days'  journey  from  Jericho  and 
was  the  capital  of  the  Nabataeans  who  were  descended 
from  Ishmael,  and  were  fire  worshipers.  They  were  a 
peaceable  people  who  lived  together  in  harmony,  which 
was  particularly  noticeable  and  surprising  as  such  for- 
eigners as  dwelt  in  the  place  were  often  in  litigation 
among  themselves,  and  even  with  the  natives.  They  had 
few  slaves;  they  either  waited  upon  themselves  or,  on 
occasion,  worked  for  their  townmates  and  for  the  king. 

Petra  is  seventy  miles  southeast  of  the  Dead  Sea  and  is 
now  called  Wady  Musa,  from  the  outlet  of  its  Springs 
.  which  is  a  charming  brook  flowing  between  flower-covered 
and  tree-shaded  banks. 

Among  the  place's  ancient  ruins  are  the  remains  of 
many  large  structures  that  the  present  inhabitants  believe 
were  the  work  of  the  Genii  or  Jins. 

StrabojXVI.  4.    J  21. 


PHCENICIA.     PALESTINE 
349 

JOPPA 

The  Spring  near  Joppa  and  close  to  the  sea  was 
noted  for  its  reddish  water,  which  was  very  much  Hke 
blood. 

Its  color  was  said  to  have  been  caused  by  the  ablutions 
of  Perseus  after  his  rescue  of  Andromeda,  whose  family 
misfortunes  were  the  subject  of  many  dramas  now  lost, 
though  all  of  the  principal  characters  have  remained 
enduringly  pictured  in  the  constellations,  including 
Cepheus  her  father,  a  king  of  Ethiopia,  and  Cassiopeia 
her  mother,  who,  extolling  her  beauty  above  that  of  the 
Nereids  aroused  their  resentment,  to  satisfy  which  they 
induced  Poseidon  to  send  a  sea  monster  to  ravage  the 
kingdom  of  Cepheus,  which  he  easily  did  by  means  of 
an  inundation. 

The  oracle  of  Ammon  then  announced  that  the  people 
and  the  lands  could  be  saved  if  Andromeda  was  given  to 
the  monster;  and,  her  father  being  forced  to  consent,  the 
innocent  daughter  was  chained  to  a  rock  near  the  Spring 
to  enable  the  monster  to  enjoy  a  leisurely  meal.  But 
while  he  was  plowing  his  way  through  the  sea  to  the  rock, 
Perseus,  returning  with  winged  ankles  from  his  adventure 
with  the  Gorgon  Medusa,  appeared  in  the  sky,  and, 
hovering  above  the  beast  destroyed  it  with  vigorous 
thrusts  of  his  sword,   while  sustaining  no  discomfort 

476 


PHCENICIA.     PALESTINE  477 

himself,  save  a  drenching  from  the  streams  that  spouted 
from  the  wounds  he  inflicted. 

Having  colored  the  Spring  in  making  himself  present- 
able, he  released  Andromeda  and  became  her  husband, 
though  not  without  further  exertions  with  his  sword  for, 
Andromeda  having  been  previously  betrothed,  the  rival 
appeared  at  the  marriage  feast  with  a  ntmierous  retinue 
of  friends,  and  would  have  asserted  his  rights  by  force 
had  Perseus  not  slain  a  number  of  them,  and  then  turned 
two  hundred  of  the  others  to  stone  by  pointing  at  them 
the  head  of  Medusa. 

In  addition  to  the  confirmation  that  was  given  to  An- 
dromeda's history  by  the  constellations,  there  were 
shown  on  the  rock  near  Joppa  vestiges  of  the  chains  that 
bound  the  heroine;  and  in  Rome  the  skeleton  of  the 
monster  itself  was  preserved:  it  was  forty  feet  long,  the 
backbone  being  a  foot  and  a  half  thick,  and  the  ribs 
higher  than  those  of  an  Indian  elephant. 

Many  centuries  later,  a  more  beneficent  sea  monster 
appeared  near  Joppa  and  rescued  Jonah  when,  at  his 
own  request,  he  was  thrown  from  a  rowboat  so  that  the 
others  might  be  saved  from  a  tempest  that  arose  shortly 
after  the  boat  had  left  Joppa  for  Tarshish. 

The  modern  name  of  the  town  is  Jaffa. 

Ovid;  Meta.  IV.    Fable  lO. 
Pausanias;  IV.  35. 
PUny;  IX.  4-  V.  14. 

HiERICUS 

The  toparchy  of  Hiericus  was  covered  by  groves  of 
palm  trees  and  watered  with  numerous  Springs. 

This  place  though  often  named,  alike  by  the  pious  and 
the  profane,  would  hardly  be  recognized  in  its  ancient 


4t8  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

spelling,  and  the  heathen  chronicler's  short  description  of 
it  gives  but  a  meager  suggestion  of  the  city  that  has  a 
long  and  fascinating  history  for  all  Christian  readers,  to 
whom  it  is  known  as  the  Jericho  of  the  Bible.  -^ 

Its  ground  was  barren,  and  the  water  of  its  Spring  was 
naught  until  Elisha  put  salt  in  a  new  cruse  and,  flinging 
it  into  the  Spring,  declared  that  he  had  healed  the  waters 
and  that  there  should  be  no  more  barren  land. 

The  town  contained  the  house,  marked  with  a  crimson 
cord,  of  the  notorious  Rahab  who  reformed  and  became 
the  mother  of  Boaz  the  progenitor,  with  the  gentle  Ruth, 
of  David  and  of  Jesus.  Jesus  Himself  was  baptized  where 
the  Jordan  flowed  past  the  town;  on  the  rocky  heights 
before  it,  the  magnificent  offers  of  the  tempter  were  made 
and  spumed ;  and  in  the  city  he  restored  the  sight  of  the 
blind.  It  was  over  against  this  town  that  Elijah  was 
carried  up  to  heaven. 

Jericho  was  some  nineteen  miles  from  Jerusalem,  but 
only  a  Bedouin  encampment  called  Riha  now  marks  its 
site,  and  the  neighborhood  of  its  Spring  called  Ras-el- 
Ain,  which,  through  Elisha's  ministrations,  made  the  land 
fertile  and  produced  the  palm  groves  that  Antony  con- 
sidered a  worthy  present  to  make  to  Cleopatra,  for  they 
were  remarkable  because  of  their  abundance  and  fruit- 
fulness,  having  a  rich,  unctuous  juice  of  a  milky  con- 
sistency, with  a  vinous  flavor  and  a  peculiar  sweetness 
like  that  of  honey. 

Pliny;  V.  is. 


Engadda 

The  town  of  Engadda,  once  noted  for  its  fertility  and 
its  groves  of  palms,  was  only  a  heap  of  ashes  in  Pliny's 


PHOENICIA.     PALESTINE  479 

time.  He  describes  the  Esseni,  the  people  who  lived 
above  its  Spring,  as  being  marvelous  beyond  all  others 
throughout  the  world,  as  they  had  no  money,  and  they 
had  no  women  among  them,  their  only  companions  being 
the  palm  trees.  But  their  numbers  were  recruited  from 
day  to  day  by  multitudes  of  strangers  wearied  with  the 
miseries  of  life  and  seeking  a  refuge  from  the  tempests  of 
fortune.  Thus  through  thousands  of  ages  that  people, 
incredible  to  relate,  had  prolonged  its  existence  without  a 
single  birth  taking  place  among  them,  so  fruitful  a  source 
of  population  to  it  was  that  weariness  of  life  which  is  felt 
by  others. 

John  the  Baptist  has  been  supposed  to  have  belonged 
to  the  sect  of  the  Essenes. 

Engedi,  some  thirty-seven  miles  from  Jerusalem,  was 
on  the  west  shore  of  the  Dead  Sea;  it  was  the  Hazezon 
Tamar  of  the  Bible.  Its  Spring,  Ain  Jedi  or  the  fountain 
of  the  Goats,  gushes  out  of  the  limestone  rock  of  a  lofty 
cliff,  at  a  height  of  about  400  feet  above  the  plain  and 
forms  a  brook  that  empties  into  the  Dead  Sea.  The 
Spring's  water  is  sweet  and  pleasant,  although  as  warm 
as  81  degrees  Fahr.,  and  the  attraction  the  water  still 
has  for  numerous  flocks  of  goats  indicates  how  the  foun- 
tain originally  received  its  name. 

Pliny;  v.  IS. 


Callirrhoe 

Callirrhoe  was  a  warm  Spring  remarkable  for  its  medi- 
cinal qualities  and  its  name  indicates  the  celebrity  that 
its  waters  gained. 

This  Spring  was  on  the  east  side  of  the  River  Jordan, 
and  its  waters  had  a  sulphurous  taste.  '^ 


48o  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

The  unpleasantness  always  connected  with  the  name 
of  Callirrhoe  was  as  marked  in  the  case  of  this  Spring  as 
in  the  other  instances  cited,  if  Renan  is  correct  in  his  con- 
jecture that  it  is  the  boiling  and  sulphurous  Spring  which 
the  apocalyptic  Book  of  Enoch  describes  as  being  in  the 
subterranean  valley  that  was  the  abode  of  the  wicked 
Fallen  Angels,  and  whose  only  redeeming  trait  was  that  it 
served  to  cure  diseases. 

Under  medical  advice,  Herod,  in  his  last  illness,  re- 
sorted to  the  Spring  of  Callirrhoe,  which  was  opposite 
the  center  of  the  Dead  Sea. 

The  Springs  as  now  known,  for  there  are  four  that 
issue  near  each  other,  are  in  a  romantic  valley  crowded 
with  canes  and  palms  and  surrounded  by  parti-colored 
rocks,  the  yellow  of  which  is  produced  by  the  sulphur 
deposits  of  the  waters.  The  stream  formed  by  the  out- 
pouring Springs  is  twelve  feet  wide  and  ten  inches  deep 
and  has  a  temperature  of  95° ;  it  flows  into  the  Dead  Sea. 

Pliny;  V.  15. 


353 
The  Jordan 

The  river  Jordanes  rose  from  the  cave  Spring  of  PaniaSi 
in  Mt.  Panias  in  the  range  of  Anti-Libanus. 

In  the  cave  there  was  an  oracle  of  Pan  where  revela- 
tions were  made  by  the  interpretation  of  dreams. 

Josephus  went  more  into  details,  and  stated  that  while 
the  source  of  the  Jordan  appeared  to  be  in  the  sanctuary 
of  Pan,  it  was  really  some  distance  away  in  a  circular 
Spring  at  Phiala,  from  which  it  traveled  underground  to 
Panias,  or  Banias,  as  had  been  proved  by  finding  in  one 
Spring  chaff  which  had  been  thrown  into  the  other. 


PHCENICIA.     PALESTINE  481 

Unfortunately  Phiala  has  not  been  identified,  as  there  is 
more  than  one  circular  Spring  from  which  to  choose. 

Others  gave  a  partnership  credit  to  another  Spring 
that  they  believed  to  be  the  Ain  of  the  Bible,  and  which, 
as  the  fountain  of  Daphne  under  the  hill  of  Dan  2  miles 
west  of  Banias,  gushed  out  all  at  once  and  made  the  Jor 
a  beautiful  river  of  delicious  water,  the  two  streams,  the 
Jor  and  the  Dan  uniting  to  form  both  the  river  and  its 
name. 

Modern  travelers  have  added  a  third,  and  even  a 
fourth  Spring ;  the  third  gushing  translucently  from  under 
a  perpendicular  rock  near  Hashbeia  and  north  of  Dan; 
and  the  fo\uth,  the  Spring  of  Esh  Shar. 

Although  the  Jordan  is  an  unnavigable  stream  that 
empties  into  a  portless  Sea  and  has  never  had  a  town  of 
any  prominence  upon  its  banks,  it  is  the  largest  as  well 
as  the  most  celebrated  stream  in  Palestine,  and  it  might 
be  called  the  original  baptismal  font,  as  Jesus  and  John 
the  Baptist  were  immersed  in  its  waters. 

The  river's  length  is  two  hundred  miles,  which  distance 
it  runs  to  get  sixty  miles  away  from  its  Springs.  From  the 
tortuousness  of  its  course  it  has  been  likened  to  a  snake 
twisting  through  vegetation  and  between  rocks,  and, 
rather  more  pleasantly,  to  a  vine  creeping  with  many  a 
sidelong  turn  over  the  valley's  floor. 

The  river  has  also  been  called  a  continuous  waterfall, 
as  it  drops  in  some  places  116  feet  in  a  mile,  and  in  one 
hundred  and  seventeen  miles  it  falls  1983  feet. 

It  is  supposed  that  the  Jordan  at  one  time  emptied  into 
the  Mediterranean,  or  the  Red  Sea;  and  that  its  course 
was  changed  by  the  volcanic  disturbance  that  anni- 
hilated Sodom  and  Gomorrha  and  their  wicked  sister 
cities  of  the  plain,  which  sank  to  swallow  the  sinning 
cities  when  they  had  increased  to  the  fatal  number 


482  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

thirteen,  and  left  a  basin  into  which  the  river  poured  to 
form  the  Dead  Sea  which  is  1374  feet  below  the  level  of 
the  Mediterranean  Sea,  and  is  gradually  but  measurably 
going  lower. 

The  modern  name  of  the  Jordan  is  Es  Shiriah,  which  is 
very  like  that  of  the  third  of  its  Springs. 

Pliny;  V.  IS. 


354 
Tiberias 

The  hot  Springs  of  Tiberias  were  conducive  to  the  res- 
toration of  health.  They  were  by  Lake  Tiberias,  the 
Sea  of  Gennesareth  at  Emmaus,  the  Hammath  of 
Josephus,  where  Jesus  was  first  seen  by  the  disciples  after 
the  resurrection,  as  related  by  St.  Luke. 

Pliny;  V.  15. 


355 
The  Spring  of  Aradus 

The  Spring  of  Aradus  rose  in  the  sea  between  the  main- 
land and  the  city  of  Aradus,  which  was  on  a  rocky  island 
of  the  same  name,  about  two  and  a  half  miles  from  the 
coast  of  Phoenicia,  on  a  line  with  the  island  of  Cyprus. 

The  island,  only  a  mile  in  circumference,  had  so  large 
a  population  that  it  was  necessary  to  build  the  houses  of 
many  stories  to  economize  space;  and  the  inhabitants 
secured  their  water  from  the  Spring  in  the  sea  by  very 
ingeniously  forming  a  temporary  artesian  Well,  which 
they  constructed  with  a  long  leather  tube  attached  to  the 
narrow  end  of  a  large  lead  funnel.  Placing  this  apparatus 
in  a  boat  they  rowed  out  to  the  Spring  and  lowered  the 


PHCENICIA.     PALESTINE  483 

funnel  over  it,  and  when  the  gushing  fountain  had  forced 
the  sea  water  out  of  the  tube  a  constant  stream  of  spark- 
ling fresh  water  followed,  and  filled  the  receptacles  that 
were  in  waiting  in  other  boats  which  conveyed  them  to 
the  city's  reservoirs. 

Aradus  was  at  the  northern  boundary  of  Phoenicia  and 
was  the  third  of  its  most  important  cities,  some  of  its 
territory  being  across  the  channel  on  the  mainland.  It 
was  a  very  old  town,  not  only  mentioned  in  the  Bible, 
but,  being  of  the  same  antiquity  as  its  sister  city  Tyre, 
dated  back  to  at  least  2700  years  B.C.  on  the  Mediterra- 
nean; and  even  before  that  time,  for  that  was  the  date  of 
the  Temple  of  Hercules  at  Tyre,  Aradus  and  Tyre  were 
towns  in  the  two  islands  of  Bahreim,  in  the  Persian  Gulf, 
from  which  the  two  Phoenician  names  and  settlements 
were  transferred. 

The  Tyrians  when  they  moved  from  the  Gulf  erected  a 
temple  to  the  Phoenician  Hercules,  perhaps  the  original 
and  only  genuine  hero,  and  the  one  the  Phoenicians  called 
Melcarth,  a  name  that  seemingly  suggested  Melicertes, 
the  Greeks'  early  name  for  their  Hercules;  while  their 
later  name,  Heracles,  is  merely  an  anagram  of  Melcarth, 
made  by  substituting  two  letters  and  spelling  the  name 
backwards. 

There  was  hardly  any  district  about  the  Mediterranean 
and  along  the  waters  to  be  reached  from  it,  that  did  not 
have  some  settlement  perpetuating  the  name  of  Hercules, 
and  that  too,  as  in  the  case  of  the  temple  at  Tyre,  gener- 
ally long  before  the  Greeks  could  have  appropriated  the 
name  to  their  own  hero. 

Another  temple  of  Hercules  claimed  for  the  Grecian 
hero  was  the  one  at  Gades  where,  although  it  was  founded 
after  the  Trojan  war,  the  rites  practiced  were  not  Grecian 
but  primitive  Phoenician  rites. 


484  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

It  might  perhaps  be  assumed  that  Melcarth  was  a 
popular  idol  whose  name  was  considered  a  talisman, 
promising  good  luck  to  settlements  and  popularity  for 
products,  because  it  was  owing  to  his  policies,  extending 
Phoenician  commerce,  and  afterwards  sending  out  colo- 
nies to  foster  traffic  and  the  growth  of  trade,  that  the 
country  reached  its  wonderful  degree  of  prosperity.  The 
number  of  those  colonies  that  may  be  tracked  by  a  Phoeni- 
cian name,  or  inscription,  all  the  way  from  the  shores  of 
the  Euxine  to  the  west  coast  of  Spain,  is  surprising,  and 
all  the  more  so  when  it  is  considered  that  they  issued 
from  a  country  120  miles  long  and  12  miles  broad.  And 
equally  surprising  is  the  amount  of  originality  and  genius 
the  little  country  produced.  Converting  the  hieroglyphs 
of  still  older  Egypt  into  an  alphabet,  she  made  possible 
an  easily  transmitted  record  of  the  events  of  every  coun- 
try, though,  ironically  enough,  practically  no  record  at 
all  has  been  preserved  of  her  own.  Much,  however,  may 
be  learned  from  others ;  thus.  Homer  praises  the  drinking 
vessels  of  gold  and  silver  made  by  the  Phoenicians,  who 
perhaps  were  no  less  renowned  for  the  wares  they  made  of 
glass  which  they  discovered  how  to  manufacture.  Their 
Tyrian  Purple  was  required  wherever  rich  apparel  was 
worn,  and  they  made  the  dye  by  extracting  one  single 
drop  from  a  gland  in  each  of  a  certain  kind  of  mollusk 
peculiar  to  their  coastal  sea. 

Phoenicia  took  the  astronomical  knowledge  of  Egypt, 
or  the  East,  and  made  it  of  practical  value,  to  enable  her 
to  find  her  way  by  the  stars  in  her  navigations  to  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  as  it  was  known  in  her  times, 
even  to  Cornwall  in  Great  Britain,  and  Cape  Town  in 
Africa  which  continent  she  circumnavigated.  She 
adapted  arithmetic  to  the  necessities  of  her  merchants  for 
keeping  their  merchandise  accounts ;  and,  before  the  time 


PHCENICIA.     PALESTINE  485 

of  Troy,  the  Tyrian  Mochus  had  thought  out  the  theory 
of  atoms. 

Cadmus,  who  brought  to  Greece  the  infant  alphabet, 
then  only  fifteen  letters  long,  was  a  Phoenician. 

The  island  of  the  Spring  of  Aradus  has  today  turned 
into  Ruad,  and  the  Spring  itself  is  now  called  Ain  Ibrahim, 
Abraham's  fountain,  though  it  is  not  mentioned  among 
the  Springs  of  the  patriarch  that  are  enumerated  in  the 
Bible. 

The  sea  over  the  Spring  is  seventy-five  feet  deep,  but 
boatmen  of  today  are  said  to  continue  the  practice  of 
their  ancient  predecessors  who  drew  fresh  water  from  the 
forceful  fountain  in  the  depths. 

Pliny;  V.  34-     Strabo;  XVI.  2.     §13. 
Herodotus;  I.  I.     IV. 41. 


MESOPOTAMIA 

356 
Callirhoe 

There  was  a  fountain  called  Callirhoe  in  the  north- 
west part  of  Mesopotamia. 

From  this  fountain  a  town  is  said  to  have  taken  its 
name,  which  became  Carrhae;  and  if,  as  some  have  sup- 
posed, it  was  the  same  town  as  Haran,  the  fountain  of 
Callirhoe  may  have  had  even  a  closer  relationship  than 
that  of  townmate  with  the  Well  of  Nahor  which  was  the 
scene  of  the  first  recorded  kiss — that  with  which  Jacob 
greeted  Rachael. 

Abraham  migrated  from  Ur  of  the  Chaldees  to  Haran, 
where  the  descendants  of  his  brother  Nahor  established 
themselves,  and  where  Jacob  went  for  a  wife. 

Between  the  Euphrates  and  the  Khabur  rivers  there 
is  a  modest  village  in  about  latitude  37°  which  is  still 
called  Haran. 

Pliny;  V.  21. 


357 
Chabura 

The  Spring  of  Chabura  was  the  only  Spring  of  water 
in  the  whole  universe  that  had  an  agreeable  smell. 

Its  odor  was  due  to  Juno's  having  bathed  in  it. 

In  this  fountain  there  were  eels  that  eat  from  the  hand, 
and  that  were  adorned  with  earrings. 

486 


MESOPOTAMIA  487 

Pliny,  leaving  it  to  the  readei  to  decide  between  Juno 
and  the  eels,  places  the  incident  of  the  goddess's  bath 
between  two  paragraphs  to  the  effect  that  it  is  a  virtue 
in  water  to  have  no  flavor,  even  an  agreeable  one;  and 
that  to  be  truly  wholesome  it  should,  like  good  air,  have 
neither  taste  nor  smell. 

The  river  that  results  from  this  Spring  is  now  called 
Khabur,  and  it  falls  into  the  Euphrates  at  Circesium. 

Pliny ;  XXXI.  22.     XXXII.  7. 


ARMENIA 

358 
Armenia 

There  was  a  Spring  in  Armenia  in  which  there  were 
black  fish  that  if  used  as  food  were  productive  of  instan- 
taneous death. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  19. 


359 
Euphrates 

The  Euphrates  rose  in  Greater  Armenia  at  the  foot  of 
Mt.  Capotes  twelve  miles  from  Zamara  where  it  was 
called  Pyxurates. 

Where  it  passed  between  the  mountains  of  the  Taurus 
range  it  was  given  the  name  Omma,  and  afterwards  was 
called  Euphrates. 

Near  the  village  of  Massice  the  Euphrates  divided,  the 
left  branch  running  past  Seleucia  and  falling  into  the 
Tigris;  the  right  branch  running  to  Babylon,  through 
the  middle  of  which  it  flowed,  afterwards  dispersed 
through  marshes. 

The  Euphrates  increased  like  the  Nile  at  stated  times, 
and  at  about  the  same  periods. 

Its  modern  name  is  Frat,  and  it  is  1780  miles  long. 

Pliny;  V.  20. 

488 


ARMENIA  489 

360 
Tigris 

The  Tigris  rose  from  a  very  remarkable  source  situated 
on  a  plain  in  Greater  Armenia ;  the  name  of  the  spot  was 
Elegosine,  and  the  stream  there  was  known  as  Diglito, 
which  is  supposed  to  be  another  form  of  the  Hiddekel  of 
the  Bible. 

When  the  current  became  more  rapid  it  was  called 
Tigris,  which,  in  the  language  of  the  Medes,  meant 
"Arrow." 

It  passed  through  the  nitrous  waters  of  Lake  Arethusa 
so  compactly  that  the  fish  of  the  river  were  unaffected 
by  them;  and,  reaching  Mt.  Taurus,  it  disappeared  into  a 
cavern  through  which  it  siphoned  under  the  mountain, 
reappearing  on  the  other  side  at  Zoroande,  the  modem 
Betlis. 

Passing  through  Lake  Thospitis  it  plunged  into  the 
earth  again  and,  traveling  22  miles  unseen,  it  came  up  in 
the  vicinity  of  Nymphsum. 

In  its  course  it  passed  so  near  the  River  Arsanias  that 
when  their  waters  swelled  they  met  and  flowed  together, 
but  without  intermingling,  the  Arsanias  flowing  on  the 
surface  of  the  Tigris  for  four  miles  before  they  parted 
company. 

After  passing  Apamea  it  divided  into  two  channels 
which  afterwards  reunited  and  took  the  name  of  Pasati- 
gris  which  river  entered  the  Persian  Sea  through  a  mouth 
ten  miles  wide,  several  miles  from  the  marshes  of  the 
Euphrates. 

Strabo's  impressions  were  that  the  sources  of  the  Tigris 
and  the  Euphrates  were  more  than  three  hundred  miles 
apart ;  and  that  those  of  the  Tigris  were  somewhere  on  the 
southern  side  of  the  Taurus  range.    His  knowledge  of  the 


490  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

stream  lower  down  was,  however,  more  intimate,  and  he 
was  able  to  state  that  after  passing  through  Lake  Thospi- 
tis  the  river  sank  into  the  ground  with  a  loud  noise  of 
rushing  air. 

For  the  moderns,  the  Tigris  rises  in  eastern  Kurdistan 
within  a  few  miles  of  the  Euphrates  which  it  joins  ninety 
miles  from  the  Persian  Gulf  into  which,  thus  united,  they 
enter  as  the  Shat-el-Arab. 

Less  tortuous  than  the  Euphrates,  the  Tigris  travels 
only  1 1 50  miles  as  against  the  1 780  of  the  former. 

Pliny;  VI.  31. 

StraboiXI.  12.    §3.     XVI.  i.     §21. 


ASSYRIA.    SYRIA.    PERSIA 

361 
Thisbe's  Spring 

Thisbe's  cold  Spring  was  by  a  snow-white  mulberry 
tree  near  the  walls  of  Babylon. 

That  was  in  the  time  when  all  mulberries  were  white 
as  they  still  are  in  China  and  the  Far  East,  and  as 
they  would  still  be  in  the  Near  East  if  it  had  not  been 
for  Thisbe's  Spring — for  that  attracted  the  lioness, 
and  she  caused  the  tragedy  that  changed  the  mulberry's 
color. 

The  walls  of  Babylon  were  noted  for  their  solidity 
even  in  times  when  massive  masonry  was  by  no  means 
uncommon,  and,  as  neither  time  nor  slave-labor,  or  even 
baked  bricks,  were  then  of  any  appreciable  value,  it  is 
needless,  now  that  the  walls  have  disappeared,  to  ques- 
tion that  they  were  350  feet  high  and  87  feet  in  breadth. 
Their  condition,  however,  was  in  marked  contrast  to  the 
party  wall  of  the  house  in  which  Thisbe  lived ;  a  wall  in 
which  there  were  chinks  through  which  Pyramus,  a 
comely  youth  who  lived  in  the  adjoining  house,  made 
Thisbe's  acquaintance  and  carried  on  a  courtship  for- 
bidden by  the  parents. 

In  whispers,  an  appointment  was  made  for  a  meeting 
at  the  Spring,  and  Thisbe,  who  was  the  first  to  reach  it, 
had  hardly  laid  aside  her  veil  when  a  lioness,  seeking 
liquid  refreshment  after  a  sanguinary  meal  of  ox  flesh, 
approached  the  water  and  made  the  maiden  retire, 
hastily  and  unseen,  to  the  shelter  of  a  cavern. 

491 


492  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

The  veil,  stained  by  the  dripping  jaws  of  the  lioness 
when  she  sniffed  and  pawed  it,  lay  flaming  in  the  moon- 
light when  the  tardy  Pyramus  arrived,  and,  coupled 
with  the  tracks  the  beast  had  left  on  the  soft  margin  of 
the  Spring,  pointed  to  but  one  conclusion. 

Passionately  blaming  himself  and  his  lateness  for  his 
mistress'  fate,  Pyramus  dealt  his  breast  a  mortal  wound 
with  his  sword,  and  fell  at  the  foot  of  the  mulberry  tree 
whose  roots,  dyed  with  his  blood,  colored  the  sap  and 
tinged  the  snow-white  berries  with  a  purple  hue. 

Thisbe,  returning  from  the  cave  only  in  time  to  hear 
her  lover's  last  sigh,  paused  but  long  enough  to  adjure 
the  tree  to  retain  the  token  of  their  fate  and  forever  bear 
black  fruit  as  a  mourning  memorial,  and  then  threw 
herself  upon  the  point  of  the  discarded  sword  and  re- 
plenished the  stream  the  roots  were  still  absorbing. 

The  gods,  moved  by  the  pathetic  adjuration,  decreed 
that  all  the  mulberries  of  the  country  should  thence- 
forward be  black;  and  the  conscience  stricken  parents, 
repenting  their  harshness,  mingled  in  one  um  the  ashes 
of  the  innocent  lovers. 

Shakespeare,  when  he  travestied  the  tragedy  in  "A 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  assigned  characters  for  the 
Wall  and  the  Moonlight,  and  the  Lion — which  Bottom  de- 
sired to  play  because  he  could  roar  as  gently  as  any  sucking 
dove  and  would  not  frighten  the  ladies — but  omitted  a 
part  for  either  the  Tree,  or  the  principal  factor,  the  Spring. 

Ovid;  Meta.  IV.    Fable  I. 
Herodotus;  I.  178. 

362 

Babylonian  Naptha  Springs 

There  were  Springs  of  naptha  near  the  Euphrates 
River  in  Babylonia;  some  producing  white  naptha  which 


ASSYRIA.     SYRIA.     PERSIA  493 

attracted  flame  and  was  liquid  sulphur ;  and  others  black 
naptha  which  was  liquid  asphaltus  and  was  burned  in 
lamps  instead  of  oil. 

Alexander  was  much  interested  in  what  he  was  told 
about  the  properties  of  naptha  and  its  almost  inex- 
tinguishable flame,  and  assured  himself  of  its  peculiari- 
ties by  means  of  some  easily  conducted  experiments  with 
a  boy, whom  he  put  in  a  bath  of  it  which  he  ignited  from 
the  flame  of  a  lamp. 

Fortunately  the  boy's  shrieks  atracted  the  attention 
of  his  friends,  who  succeeded  at  the  last  moment  in  res- 
cuing him  from  the  amateur  scientist's  zeal. 

The  Spring  beyond  the  city  of  Demetrias,  as  it  was 
close  to  Babylon,  possibly  furnished  the  naptha  for  this 
royal  experiment. 

Another  incident  in  Alexander's  life  is  recalled  by  the 
name  of  a  place  in  Babylonia  east  of  this  Spring,  Gauga- 
mela,  where  Darius  was  defeated  by  Alexander  and  lost 
his  kingdom,  in  October,  331  B.C.  Gaugamela  means  the 
Camel's  House,  and  Darius  gave  it  the  name  when  he 
assigned  its  revenues  for  the  support  of  a  faithful  camel 
that  had  grown  old  in  carrying  his  baggage  and  provisions 
through  the  deserts. 

Strabo;XVI.  I.    §15.     XVI.  i.    §3. 


363 

Ardericca's  Well 

The  village  of  Ardericca  was  above  the  city  of  Babylon 
on  the  Euphrates,  and  the  river's  windings  about  the 
village  were  as  peculiar  in  their  way  as  were  the  products 
of  the  Well. 

Passengers  traveling  by  boat  on  the  Euphrates  touched 


494  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

at  the  village  three  times  in  three  successive  days,  a  river 
squirm  that  perhaps  has  no  parallel. 

The  Well  was  five  miles  from  Ardericca,  and  it  pro- 
duced three  different  substances. 

It  had  a  wine  skin  for  a  bucket,  and  the  skin  was  raised 
with  a  swipe,  a  primitive  form  of  pump  handle  made  of  a 
young  tree  trunk  with  a  shorter  trunk  for  a  post. 

The  contents  of  the  wine-skin  bucket,  on  being  emptied 
out,  assumed  three  forms,  one  part  becoming  solid  asphalt, 
another  part  solid  salt,  and  the  third  part  a  black,  strong- 
odored  oil  that  the  Persians  called  Rhadinace. 

Herodotus;  VI.  1 18.     I.  185. 


364 

The  Castalian  Spring 
(Daphne) 

Daphne  was  a  town  of  moderate  size  eight  miles  out  of 
Antioch.  It  had  a  large  forest  three  miles  deep,  with 
thick  coverts  of  shade,  and  Springs  of  water  flowing 
through  it. 

In  the  midst  of  the  forest  there  was  a  sacred  sanctuary 
and  a  temple  of  Apollo  and  Diana.  Under  the  protective 
security  of  the  sanctuary  license  was  let  loose,  and  the 
grove  became  the  scene  of  a  perpetual  festival  of  vice. 

King  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  sometimes  called  the  Mad, 
is  said  to  have  mixed  the  water  of  the  fountain  of  Antioch 
with  wine  to  add  to  the  convivialities  on  one  occasion. 
His  peculiar  ways,  as  described  at  length  by  Athenaeus, 
indicate  that  he  was  the  prototype  of  the  Calif  Haroun  al 
Raschid  of  the  Arabian  Nights. 

Daphne  has  been  called  the  Versailles  of  Antioch ;  but 
for  the  frequenters  of  the  grove  there  was  much  to  make 


ASSYRIA.     SYRIA.     PERSIA  495 

it  suggestive  of  the  Grecian  Delphi,  one  of  its  fountains 
being  called  the  Castalian  Spring,  and  a  nearby  bay  tree 
being  pointed  out  as  the  tree  into  which  Apollo's  Daphne 
was  transformed. 

The  fountain  produced  the  sacred  water  of  the  Oracle 
of  Daphne,  whose  repute  was  such  as  might  be  expected 
from  its  surroundings.  It  was  destroyed  by  Hadrian 
who  had  learned  from  it  that  he  would  become  emperor, 
his  object  being  to  prevent  its  encouraging  anyone  else  to 
attempt  to  supplant  him.  The  Emperor  Julian  under- 
took to  restore  the  destroyed  fountain  and  to  rebuild  the 
business  of  the  temple,  and  probably  did  so  if  the  modern 
supposition  about  the  Spring's  present  existence  is  cor- 
rect, although  the  temple  was  subsequently  destroyed 
through  an  accidental  fire. 

The  waters  of  some  of  the  Springs  supplied  the  city 
of  Antioch,  to  which  they  were  conveyed  through 
an  aqueduct. 

The  numerous  and  prolific  fountains  of  the  modern 
Beit-el-Maa  have  led  to  its  identification  as  the  ancient 
and  depraved  Daphne. 

Athenaeus;  II.  23.     V.  21. 
Strabo;  XVI.  2.     5  6. 


Typhon 

Typhon,  in  the  form  of  an  immense  serpent,  having 
been  wounded  by  Zeus  with  a  dart  of  lightning,  bored 
into  the  ground  for  concealment,  and  made  a  mole-like 
passage  of  eight  miles  before  reappearing. 

The  chasm  the  serpent  made  when  entering  the  earth 
was  called  Charybdis.  Where  it  came  up  again,  near 
Libanus,  Springs  gushed  out  through  the  opening  and 


496  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

formed  the  river  called  Typhon.  The  stream  ran  near 
the  city  of  Antioch  and  in  the  course  of  time  it  received 
the  name  of  Orontes,  a  man  who  built  a  bridge  over  it,  in 
place  of  the  name  of  the  serpent  who  brought  it  to  light. 
The  Springs  watered  a  hunting  park  whose  location  is 
still  marked  by  a  sixty  foot  high  square  shaft  having  a 
pyramidal  top,  and  carved  on  its  four  sides  with  gro- 
tesque hunting  scenes.  This  is  near  the  village  of  Kur- 
mul  north  of,  and  a  twelve-hour  trip  from  the  village  of 
Labweh  (near  Baalbek)  which  latter  would  seem  to  be 
where  the  serpent  actually  entered  the  earth. 

:.    Strabo;  XVI.  2.     §7.     VI.  2.     §9. 
Strabo;XVI.2.     5 19. 


366 

One  Thousand  Springs 

A  large  collection  of  Springs  in  Syria  was  called  by  the 
people  of  the  district  Bing-gheul,  or,  the  Thousand 
Springs. 

It  has  been  conjectured  that  the  River  Lycus,  anciently 
mentioned  as  a  tributary  of  the  Euphrates,  had  its  in- 
ception in  this  aggregation  of  fountains,  and  that  the 
river  was  a  confluent  which  flowed  into  the  Tigris  (not 
the  Euphrates)  a  little  south  of  Larissa  near  Nimrud, 
the  town  founded  perhaps  2200  years  before  Christ,  by 
Nimrod  the  mighty  hunter  and  the  grandson  of  Ham. 

Pliny;  V.  20. 


Springs  of  the  Dardes 

■;     No  mention  is  made  of  the  Springs  of  the  Dardes  except 
in  the  history  of  the  march  that  the  younger  Cyrus 


ASSYRIA.     SYRIA.     PERSIA  497 

began  with  the  object  of  capturing  Babylon,  and  that 
Xenophon  concluded  with  the  sole  aim  of  saving  as  many 
as  possible  of  the  13,000  defeated  Greek  soldiers,  Cyrus 
having  lost  his  life  without  getting  within  thirty  miles  of 
the  coveted  city  of  his  brother  Artaxerxes. 

The  celebrated  advance  and  retreat  occupied  15 
months,  beginning  in  B.C.  401,  and  the  retreat  was  made 
through  such  rigors  of  climate,  and  harassments  by  foes, 
that  only  8640  of  the  original  participants  succeeded  in 
completing  the  round  march  of  some  4000  miles. 

Belesys,  the  governor  of  Syria,  had  built  a  palace  at 
the  Springs  and  had  surrounded  it  with  a  very  large  and 
beautiful  garden  containing  all  that  the  seasons  produce; 
but  Cyrus  laid  waste  the  notable  garden  and  burned  the 
palace. 

The  Springs  were,  on  one  side,  30  parasangs  from  the 
River  Chalus,  which  was  full  of  large  tame  fish  that  the 
Syrians  looked  upon  as  gods  and  allowed  no  one  to  harm ; 
and,  on  the  other  side,  15  parasangs  from  the  River 
Euphrates;  but  as  the  parasang  was  an  elastic  measure 
that  varied  between  three  miles  and  half  as  many,  accord- , 
ing  to  the  nature  of  the  ground  traversed,  and  as  the 
compass  direction  of  the  march  is  unknown,  such  travelers 
as  have  tried  to  retrace  the  route  of  the  ancient  army 
have  been  unable  to  agree  on  the  exact  location  of  these 
Springs. 

They  were  perhaps  approximately  about  5  minutes 
north  of  where  the  36th  parallel  crosses  the  38th  merid- 
ian; and  their  present  name  may  no  doubt  be  found 
among  the  following  that  have  been  suggested;  the 
fountain  of  Fay,  or  Far;  the  fountain  of  Bab  (al  Bab)  or 
Dhahab  or  Dabb ;  the  fountain  of  Daradaz,  or  Ain  Abu 
Galgal. 

Xenophon.  Anabasis;  I.  4.     §  10. 


498  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

368 

EULEUS 

The  Spring  of  Euleus  rose  in  rapid  eddies ;  its  stream  then 
disappeared  and  concealed  itself  in  the  earth,  but  after 
a  short  course  underground  rose  again. 

The  kings  of  the  country  would  drink  no  other  water 
than  that  from  Euleus,  even  when  traveling  on  long 
journeys,  during  which  they  always  carried  a  sufficient 
supply  to  last  them  until  their  return. 

The  lightness  and  purity  of  the  water  were  individual ; 
indeed  it  was  the  lightest  of  all,  for  a  cotylus,  or  about  a 
half  pint  of  it,  weighed  less  than  the  same  measure  of 
any  other  water.  Another  of  its  merits  was  the  excel- 
lence of  the  eels  that  its  river  produced,  and  the  river 
itself  was  venerated  with  many  pompous  ceremonies. 

The  stream  of  the  Spring  flowed  into  the  Tigris  and  it  is 
supposed  to  be  the  River  Ulai,  on  the  banks  of  which  the 
prophet  Daniel  had  his  wonderful  vision  that  was  fol- 
lowed by  his  sickness  of  many  days,  the  vision  of  the 
combat  between  two  remarkable  animals;  the  ram  with 
one  horn  higher  than  the  other,  and  the  goat  that  pro- 
gressed without  touching  the  ground,  and  that  had  a 
single  horn  between  its  eyes. 

Athenaeus;  VII.  56.     Pliny;  VI.  31. 
Strabo;  XV.  3-5  22. 


Bagistanus 

The  great  Springs  of  Bagistanus  burst  out  from  large 
fissures  in  the  mountain  for  which  they  were  named. 

They  watered  a  plain,  on  the  confines  of  Media,  in 
which  Queen  Semiramis  had  a  wonderful  garden  laid  out 


ASSYRIA.     SYRIA.     PERSIA  499 

which  was  called  "Paradise,"  and  which  abounded  in 
fruits  and  all  other  things  pertaining  to  luxury. 

High  up  on  the  mountain,  from  which  the  Springs 
issued  at  one  end  of  the  garden,  there  was  a  colossal 
group  of  figures  representing  the  queen  and  a  hundred 
members  of  her  court.  These  were  carved  in  relief  on  the 
mountain  itself,  where  a  huge  portion  of  its  side  had  been 
hewn  away  to  make  a  flat  surface  of  rock  on  which  to 
cut  the  gigantic  figures,  many  of  which  are  said  to  be 
still  visible,  and  well  preserved  owing  to  a  coating  of 
varnish  which  vies  with  the  rock  in  its  hardness. 

The  garden  that  faced  these  Springs  was  laid  out  within 
a  few  years  of  2182  B.C.,  which  is  a  date  in  the  period  of 
the  reign  of  Queen  Semiramis.  Having  been  abandoned 
by  her  mother  she  was  fed  and  kept  alive  by  doves.  She 
married  King  Ninus,  and,  having  requested  the  privilege 
of  sole  rulership  for  five  days,  she  at  once  had  the  king 
murdered  and  prolonged  her  reign  for  forty-two  years, 
during  which  she  built  Babylon  and  erected  a  tomb  a 
mile  and  an  eighth  high  for  Ninus.  At  the  end  of  her 
reign  she  disappeared  in  the  form  of  a  dove. 

The  locality  is  now  called  Basitun. 

Diodorus;  VI.  13.     Pliny;  VI.  31. 


369a 

The  Golden  Water 

There  was  a  Fountain  in  Persia  called  The  Golden 
Water  which  rose  in  seventy  Springs. 

No  one  but  the  King  and  his  eldest  sons  drank  of  the 
water  of  this  Fountain,  and  to  confine  its  use  to  them 
it  was  decreed  that  anyone  else  who  drank  from  the 
Fountain  should  be  put  to  death. 


500  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

This  account  of  the  Golden  Water  was  given  by 
Agathocles  a  Greek  historian  whose  works  were  widely- 
read  in  antiquity  but  are  now  lost  save  for  some 
fragments  that  were  quoted  by  other  authors  whose 
writings  have  been  preserved. 

Athenaeus;  XII.  lo 


ENGLAND 

370 
Aqu^  Sulis 

The  Aquae  Sulis  of  the  Romans  were  the  four  curative 
Springs  of  Bath  on  the  River  Avon  in  England. 

Their  hot,  chalybeate  waters  range  in  temperature 
from  97  to  117  degrees  Fahrenheit,  and  are  resorted  to 
for  the  cure  of  gout,  rheumatism  and  many  other  affec-, 
tions.  * 

They  rise  near  the  river,  in  the  center  of  the  town,  and 
have  a  flow  of  more  than  184,000  gallons  daily. 

A  larger  mmiber  of  Roman  remains  have  been  found 
near  these  Springs  than  in  any  other  place  in  Britain. 
Ruins  of  the  ancient  baths  were  uncovered  in  1775,  and 
in  1 881  an  entire  bath  was  found  in  a  complete  state  of 
preservation. 

They  were  also  called  Aquae  Solis,  and  Aquae  Calidae. 

Ptolemy;  II.  3.     §  28. 


5ot:. 


FRANCE.     BELGIUM 

371 
Springs  of  Bormo 

A  local  deity,  Bormo,  gave  name  to  Springs  in  two 
localities  in  Gaul.  They  are  exceptions  that  prove  the 
rule  governing  the  fictions  of  ancient  fountains  and  show, 
like  the  proverbial  good  rule,  that  it  may  work  in  more 
ways  than  one — for  the  transforming  of  a  person  into  a 
Spring,  or,  of  a  king  into  a  god  by  deifying  him,  is  seen 
in  the  records  of  the  Springs  of  Bormo  to  have  been 
reversed. 

After  several  changes  in  sound  as  are  frequently  caused 
by  faulty  ears  or  careless  tongues,  Bormo,  passing 
through  Boronis,  Borvonis  and  Borboni,  finally  became 
Bourbon  about  the  Xth  century  a.d.  ;  and  the  house  of 
Bourbon,  which  had  long  been  connected  with  more  than 
one  throne,  came  at  last  to  have  a  king  of  its  own.  Thus 
the  old  local  deity  perpetuated  in  the  Springs,  and  then 
in  the  family  name,  was  eventually  represented,  in  1589, 
by  a  man — a  man  who  became  King  Henry  IV.  of  France. 

The  Roman  Itineraries,  on  tablets  of  marble  or  metal, 
gave  the  names  of  stations  on  the  military  roads,  and  the 
distances  of  the  places  from  each  other  in  miles,  called 
Mille  Passum  and  written  "M  P, "  each  representing  a 
thousand  paces  of  five  feet ;  in  these  tablets  the  locations 
of  mineral  Springs  were  marked  with  a  small  square ;  and 
such  is  the  marking  on  a  still  extant  tablet  that  officially 
located  the  Springs  of  Bormo. 

502 


FRANCE.     BELGIUM  503 

The  waters  continue  to  be  noted  for  their  mineral 
content,  and  they  are  found  in  two  places  in  central 
France;  on  the  road  to  Bourges  a  fewmiles  from  the  River 
Allier;  and  at  Bourbonne-les-bains,  twenty  miles  north- 
east of  Longres,  on  the  Borne  River. 

They  are  hot  as  well  as  saline  Springs,  their  tempera- 
tures ranging  from  121  to  136  degrees. 

Smith's  Die.  of  Gk.  and  Ro.  Geo. 


Aqu^  Calid/E  '- 

The  Romans  became  acquainted  with  the  curative 
virtues  of  the  mineral  waters  of  the  old  volcanic  region  of 
France  long  before  the  expiration  of  the  heathen  era,  and 
especially  recognized  the  value  of  the  Aquae  Calidae  or 
Springs  of  Vichy,  although  they  attracted  no  marked 
attention  from  the  moderns  until  as  late  as  the  XlXth 
century,  during  which  the  place  became  the  most  popular 
of  all  the  French  resorts  for  health,  and  acquired  as  much 
vogue  as  it  had  enjoyed  eighteen  centuries  earlier  in  the 
reigns  of  Claudius  and  Nero,  coins  and  remains  of  marble 
baths  of  the  periods  of  those  emperors  having  been  found 
in  abundance  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Springs. 

The  home  of  these  Springs  is  by  the  River  Allier  35 
miles  from  Moulins,  where  they  rise  at  the  foot  of  the 
Auvergne  mountains,  and  are  hemmed  in  by  hills  clothed 
with  vineyards  and  orchards. 

They  are  claimed  to  be  the  most  efficacious  of  all  alka- 
line Springs  in  cases  of  indigestion,  gout  and  catarrh. 
They  range  in  temperature  from  68  to  1 12  degrees  Fahr. 
and  are  used  both  for  bathing  and  as  beverages ;  for  the 
latter  purpose  they  were  exported  a  few  years  ago  in 


50«t  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

larger  quantities  than  perhaps  any  Spring  water  except 
ApoUinaris. 

Some  of  the  Springs  are  acid. 

Smith's  Gk.  and  Ro.  Geo.  "Aquae  Calidae. " 


373 
Orge 

The  fountain  of  Orge  in  GaUia  Narbonensis  was 
famous,  and  it  derived  its  fame  from  the  fact  that  plants 
that  grew  in  its  waters  did  not  draw  their  nourishment 
from  them,  but  from  the  rains. 

The  neighboring  cattle  were  so  immoderately  fond  of 
feeding  on  the  plants  of  the  Spring  of  Orge  that  they 
would  even  plunge  their  heads  below  the  surface  in  order 
to  crop  the  ultimate  particles  of  the  stems. 

It  is  not  yet  known  by  what  means  the  ancients  ascer- 
tained that  it  was  the  rain  and  not  the  Spring's  water  that 
nourished  these  peculiar  growths,  but  it  has  been  sur- 
mised that  they  were  the  Festuca  Fluitans. 

Pliny;  XVIII.  51. 


374 
Aqu^  Convenarum 

The  location  of  these  Springs  has  not  yet  been  agreed 
upon;  Bigorre,  celebrated  in  "Lucile, "  Capbern  and 
other  places,  having  been  suggested  by  different  iden- 
tifiers. 

In  the  Antonine  Itinerary  they  are  set  down  as  being 
on  the  road  from  the  Aquae  Tarbellae  to  Toulouse,  and 
to  the  east  of  Lugdunum. 

They  may  have  been  what  Strabo  refers  to  as  the  hot 


FRANCE.     BELGIUM  505 

Springs  of  the  Onesii  (or  Monesi)  which  were  most  ex- 
cellent for  drinking,  and  were  at  or  near  Lugdunum 
(St.  Bertrand).  They  may  possibly  be  what  are  now 
called  the  Bagnieres-sur-1'Adour. 

Strabo;  IV.  2.     §1. 


375 
Aqvje  Tarbell^ 

The  Springs  of  the  Tarbelli  were,  some  of  them,  hot, 
and,  others,  cold. 

The  town  of  Aqs  on  the  road  to  Bordeaux  now  possesses 
those  noted  mineral  Springs  of  the  Tarbelli,  and  the 
town's  name  is  but  a  modification  of  the  ancient  "Aquae." 

Pliny;  XXXI.  2. 


376 

AQU/E   SEXTI.E 

The  Aquae  SextiaB  were  in  the  territory  of  the  Saluvii. 

Aquas  was  the  Roman  designation  for  many  medicinal 
Springs  and  bathing  places,  and  it  is  reflected  in  the 
present  name  of  these  Springs,  Aix;  they  are  in  the  De- 
partment of  the  Bouches  du  Rhone  eighteen  miles  north 
of  Marseilles. 

When,  in  122  B.C.,  Sextius  Calvinus  defeated  the  Sa- 
luvii he  founded  a  town  at  the  Springs,  and  combined  his 
own  name  and  the  Springs'  designation  for  the  name  of 
the  new  settlement  which  erected  a  temple  to  Apollo 
that  is  believed  to  have  been  converted  into  the  baptistry 
of  the  present  cathedral.  In  early  times  many  of  the 
Springs  there  were  hot,  but  at  the  present  day  none  is  of 
more  than  a  moderate  warmth,  about  90°  or  100°  Fahr. 


506  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

They  are  clear  and  transparent  waters  with  a  slightly 
bitter  taste,  but  almost  devoid  of  any  odor. 

They  attract  a  considerable  clientele  of  women  under 
the  impression  that  has  been  created  that  they  act  as  a 
cosmetic  by  clearing  the  skin  and  beautifying  the 
complexion. 

Pliny;  III.  s.     Strabo;  IV.  i.     §  s. 


377 
Aqu^  Gratian^ 

The  Aquae  Gratianae  are  the  mineral  Springs  of  Aix-les- 
Bains  east  of  Lake  Bourget  and  north  of  Chamb^ry  in 
the  Duchy  of  Savoy. 

They  are  two  hot  sulphurous  Springs  that  appear  823 
feet  above  sea  level,  and  have  a  temperature  of  100 
degrees  Fahr. 

They  were  resorted  to  as  now,  in  the  time  of  the  Roman 
empire  both  for  bathing  and  for  drinking. 

Aix  is  the  French  name  for  many  places  possessing 
Springs ;  it  represents  the  old  French  word  Aigues  which 
was  derived  from  Aquae,  the  Latin  word  for  waters,  and, 
when  combined  with  the  name  of  a  place,  usually  for 
mineral  Spring  waters. 

Smith's  Gk.  and  Ro.  Geo. 


378 

Nemausus 

The  purity  of  the  fountain  of  Nemausus  received  the 
praises  of  the  early  poets,  and  modern  writers,  describing 
it  under  the  name  of  the  fountain  of  the  Nymphs  by 
which  the  citizens  of  its  native  place,  Nimes,  now  call  it, 


FRANCE.     BELGIUM  507 

are  quite  as  laudatory  in  their  prose  accounts  of  its  pellu- 
cidness  and  freedom  from  sediment. 

Nemausus  was  in  Gallia  Narbonensis,  the  designation 
given  to  that  part  of  Gallia  that  bordered  on  the  Medi- 
terranean as  far  east  as  the  river  Var  at  Nice,  where  Italy- 
then  began,  and  of  which  Narbonne  was  the  chief  city. 
It  was  named  after  a  son  of  Hercules. 

When  Nemausus  was  the  capital  of  the  tribe  of  the 
Arecomisci  and  its  twenty-four  villages,  the  fountain 
supplied  the  capital  through  a  subterraneous  channel; 
but,  as  the  place  expanded  under  Roman  occupancy,  the 
Springs  of  the  Eure  and  the  Aizan,  25  miles  away,  were 
tapped  and  their  waters  were  carried  to  the  town  by  an 
aqueduct  which,  where  it  crossed  the  Gardon  River  over 
three  tiers  of  arches,  is  now  known  as  the  Pont  Du  Gard. 
The  neighborhood  of  Nimes  contains  more  remains  of 
Roman  structures  than  any  other  part  of  France,  and  the 
Pont  Du  Gard,  which  is  thirteen  miles  from  the  city,  is 
one  of  the  finest  specimens  in  the  country. 

The  fountain  of  the  Nymphs  rises  at  the  foot  of  a  well- 
Wooded  hill  in  a  finely  adorned  and  beautiful  park, 
and  its  powerful  upward  pour  has  made  a  large  pool 
that  has  a  depth  of  fifty  feet  and  a  width  of  twice  as 
many. 

The  old  subterraneous  channel,  and  some  bathing 
chambers  that  were  connected  with  the  fountain,  were 
repaired  wherever  restoration  was  needed,  in  the  time  of 
Louis  XV. 

No  attempt,  however,  has  been  made  to  renew  an 
ancient  semicircular  temple  of  Diana  on  the  hillside 
above  the  fountain,  and  its  roofless  ruins  retain  un- 
marred  all  of  the  picturesque  effects  with  which  the 
artful  touch  of  time  adorns  whatever  it  ravages  or 
wrecks. 


5o8  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

The  fame  that  Nemausus  gained  through  its  fountain 
was  greatly  increased  by  its  cheeses,  which  the  epicures 
of  distant  Rome  ranked  among  the  best  that  reached  the 
capital. 

Strabo;  IV.  I.     §  3.  §  12. 
Pliny;  XI.  97. 


n:&inuot 


379 
Wound-Cure  Springs 


Pliny  mentions  Wound-Cure  Springs  in  a  general  way, 
and  alleges  that  they  possessed  individual  and  special 
properties,  some  of  them  being  beneficial  in  the  treat- 
ment of  injuries  to  the  sinews,  some  adapted  for  relieving 
the  pain  of  sprains,  while  others  had  healing  effects  in  the 
case  of  fractures. 

The  Springs  in  the  Department  of  the  Basses-Pyre- 
nees, in  the  southwest  corner  of  France,  were  held  in 
similar  esteem  by  the  French  soldiers  of  the  i6th 
century  who  regarded  them  as  a  cure  for  arquebus-shot 
wounds,  and  called  them  the  Eaux  d'arquebusades.  In 
more  peaceable  times,  these  waters  were  found  to  be 
equally  valuable  in  treating  consumption  and  other 
forms  of  lung  trouble,  and  they  still  continue  to  be  re- 
commended in  such  cases. 

These  Springs,  now  known  as  the  Eaux  Bonnes,  are 
located  some  twenty  miles  southeast  of  the  village  of 
Oleron,  and  near  the  Eaux  Chaudes  which  have  similar 
properties. 

They  comprise  several  sulphurous  Springs  with  a 
temperature  of  about  90°  Fahr.,  which  are  used  for 
bathing,  and  a  cold  Spring  whose  water  is  taken  in- 
ternally. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  3. 


FRANCE.     BELGIUM  509 

380 

FONS   TUNGRORUM 

The  Tungri  in  Gaul  possessed  a  fountain  of  great 
renown.  It  sparkled  as  it  burst  forth  with  numerous 
bubbles,  and  it  had  a  taste  of  iron,  though  that  was  not 
noticed  until  the  water  had  been  swallowed. 

It  purged  the  body  and  drove  off  tertian  fevers,  and 
dispersed  calculi. 

When  heat  was  applied  to  the  water  it  became  turgid, 
and  then  turned  to  a  red  color. 

This  description  is  supposed  by  some  to  refer  to  the 
Spring  in  the  town  of  Tongres  in  Belgium  which  is  still 
called  The  Fountain  of  Pliny;  but  others  connect  it  with 
the  famous  Spring  of  Belgium's  Spa  whose  name,  applied 
to  mineral  water  places,  has  become  a  designation  almost 
as  general  as  the  word  * '  Springs  "  itself. 

The  waters  of  this  fountain,  and  of  six  others  outside 
of  the  town,  are  cold  and  bright,  and  still  sparkle  and 
bubble  with  carbonic  acid  gas ;  and  they  contain  minute 
particles  of  iron  which  the  toy-makers  of  the  town  find 
no  less  serviceable  in  their  trade  than  the  invalids  find 
them  when  used  as  a  tonic,  for  the  toys  made  in  Spa  are 
given  their  rich  brown  color  simply  by  steeping  them  in 
the  waters  of  the  Springs. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  8. 


SWITZERLAND 

381 
The  Rhone 

Strabo  often  speaks  of  the  sources  of  the  Rhodanus,  the 
Rhone  of  the  Romans,  but  he  nowhere  attempts  to  locate 
them ;  and  Pliny  says  vaguely  that  the  Rhodanus  rushes 
down  from  the  Alps,  and  takes  its  name  from  a  place 
called  Rhoda. 

Indeed,  down  to  the  time  of  Ptolemy  there  was  no 
exact  knowledge  about  the  sources  of  the  river,  or  about 
its  mouths,  as  to  the  number  of  which  there  was  no 
agreement,  though  seven  seems  to  be  the  largest  number 
reported.  How  some  of  its  mouths  came  to  be  located  on 
the  Adriatic  is  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  Erid- 
anus,  which  some  writers  seem  to  have  confounded  with 
the  Rhodanus,  probably  from  the  somewhat  similar 
sound  of  the  names. 

This  ignorance  about  the  river  is  all  the  more  promi- 
nent because  the  Rhone  was  known  to  the  Romans  earlier 
than  any  other  river  of  the  West,  and  Hannibal  with  his 
elephants  had  followed  its  course  in  order  to  reach  an 
easy  pass  through  which  to  cross  the  Alps. 

The  Rhone  is  now  known  to  rise  in  Switzerland  in  the 
glacier  west  of  the  pass  of  St.  Gothard,  not  far  from  the 
Sources  of  the  Rhine.  The  vast  mass  of  ice  stretches 
across  the  entire  width  of  the  valley  of  the  Gallenstock, 
the  mountain  whose  many  snow-laden  peaks  supply  the 
inexhaustible  stores  of  frost  that  the  slowly  creeping 

510 


SWITZERLAND  511 

glacier  bears  down  the  mountain  to  the  warmer  regions 
below,  where  the  Rhone,  waking  from  centuries  of  torpor 
in  its  glacial  bed,  leaps  to  liquid  life  and  dashes  in  wild 
abandonment  through  the  lower  valley. 

It  afterwards  runs  into  the  eastern  end  of  the  lake  of 
Geneva,  the  Lacus  Lemanus  of  the  Romans,  entering  it 
as  a  muddy  stream  that  plainly  marks  the  course  of  its 
rushing  waters;  but,  cleansed  in  the  lake's  fifty-mile  long 
bath,  it  emerges  in  the  west,  at  Geneva,  as  a  clear  river. 

After  passing  through  a  gorge  of  the  Jura  mountains, 
it  disappears  below  the  rocks  for  three  hundred  feet, 
under  what  is  known  as  La  Perte  du  Rhone. 

The  slope  of  the  stream  is  from  six  to  seven  feet  per 
mile  in  many  stretches,  and  boats  on  the  ascending 
passage  are  frequently  forced  to  use  the  slower  waters  of 
paralleling  canals  in  order  to  make  headway  where  the 
rushing  current  bars  upward  progress.  Aided  by  this 
unusual  slope,  the  river  in  running  from  its  source  to  the 
Gulf  of  Lyons,  where  it  reaches  the  Mediterranean, 
traverses  the  distance  of  nearly  650  miles  in  record  time, 
and  receives  the  honor  of  being  the  most  rapid  river  in 
Europe,  if  not  in  the  world. 

Pliny;  III.  s-     Strabo;  IV.  i.     {  8. 


SPAIN 

382 

Tartessus 

The  silver  bedded  Spring  of  the  Tartessus  River  is 
fascinating  as  the  origin  of  a  supposed  landmark  in 
Homer's  peculiar  geography.  The  river,  though  starting 
out  with  such  bright  auspices,  soon  developed  a  liking 
for  darkness  and  frequently  disappeared  underground, 
coming  as  often  again  to  light,  but  none  the  brighter  after 
its  burrowings  through  the  discoloring  soil;  and  at  the 
end  of  its  360  mile  course  it  poured  dark  and  muddy 
streams  into  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  through  its  two  separ- 
ated channels,  one  of  which,  then  called  Gades,  has  long 
been  extinct. 

Homer,  and  also  Hesiod,  regarded  the  country  of  the 
river's  mouths  to  be  the  farthest  towards  the  west,  and 
where  the  sun  sank  into  the  ocean  drawing  night  after 
him  over  all  the  earth ;  and  the  poet's  early  ancient  com- 
mentators coupled  his  river  of  Tartarus  with  the  dark 
current  of  the  Tartessus,  the  name  Hades  having  per- 
haps come  from  the  lower  branch  called  Gades,  for  Pluto's 
cattle  were  pastured  near  Gades.  The  commentators 
also  surmised  that  that  neighborhood,  which  had  a  river 
Lethe,  now  called  the  Lima,  was  the  one  the  poet  had  in 
mind  when  describing  the  Elysian  Plain,  the  realm  of 
Pluto,  and  the  rivers  of  darkness. 

Wherever  may  have  been  the  other  places  that  Ulysses 
visited,  the  very-far-west  of  Spain,  the  end  of  the  world, 

512 


SPAIN  513 

the  place  where  daylight  finally  disappeared,  the  place 
made  mysterious  by  its  distance  and  its  dark  river  rolling 
through  lightless  underground  courses,  all  combined  to 
make  the  borders  of  the  Atlantic  much  more  appropriate 
as  a  site  for  Hades  than  any  of  the  other  places  that  were 
suggested  near  the  heart  of  Greece,  places  that  were  only 
relatively  west  to  by  no  means  a  small  part  of  the  world 
for  whom  Homer  sang  his  story.  The  people  of  the 
country  through  which  the  Tartessus  flowed  may  have 
been  ancients  to  Homer,  for  they  were  not  only  reported 
to  be  the  earliest  and  most  intelligent  inhabitants  of 
Baetica,  but  were  said  to  possess  an  alphabet,  and  ancient 
writings  and  poems  six  thousand  years  old  before  the 
birth  of  Virgil. 

The  river's  name  changed  to  Baetis  where  Baetica  was 
applied  to  the  surrounding  country ;  then  the  Arabs  called 
it  the  Great  River,  that  is  to  say  the  Wad-el-Kebir,  from 
which  evolved  its  modern  name  of  Guadalquivir. 

Its  source  is  near  Castulo  in  the  Sierra  Cazorla  moun- 
tain. 

Strabo;  III.  3.     §11.  and  5  12. 
Strabo;  III.  3,  4.     §  S. 
Hesiod;  Theogony;  In.  720. 
Hesiod;  Weeks  and  Days,  In.  167. 


Pillars  of  Hercules  Spring 

Every  age  has  had  a  mystery  for  solution,  from  the 
time  of  the  disappearance  of  Moses  to  that  of  the  Man  in 
the  Iron  Mask,  and  the  three  days'  wonder  of  the  Shells 
from  the  Sky  that  mystified  Paris. 

One  of  the  mysteries  of  the  geographers  of  two  milleni- 
ums  ago  was  the  peculiar  action  of  the  Spring  in  the 
33 


514  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

temple  of  Hercules  near  Gades,  the  Cadiz  of  modern 
Spain,  which  was  the  cause  of  almost  as  much  discussion 
among  the  learned  of  long  ago  as  was  the  contemporane- 
ous riddle  about  the  Pillars  of  Hercules,  a  quadruplex 
query  covering  what  and  where  they  were,  and  their 
number,  and  the  origin  of  the  name;  to  which  riddle 
there  was  then  no  generally  accepted  answer  that  settled 
to  every  one's  satisfaction  whether  they  were  Islands  or 
Capes  or  columns;  whether  they  were  in  India,  Germany, 
Gaul;  or  at  Gibraltar,  or  just  east,  or  to  the  west  of  it; 
and  whether  there  were  four,  three,  two  or  only  one;  and 
whether  they  were  named  after  the  Phoenician  or  after 
the  Grecian  Hercules. 

Two  attempts  to  obey  an  oracle,  to  found  a  city  where 
the  pillars  were,  resulted  in  failures  that  were  evidently 
due  to  selecting  the  wrong  location,  and  one  of  these  was 
at  the  Strait  of  Gibraltar. 

In  the  third  attempt,  made  by  some  Tyrians,  the  out- 
come was  the  successful  founding  of  Gades;  the  sacrifices 
were  acceptable,  and  it  was  apparently  proved  that  the 
true  location  of  the  Pillars  had  been  found  in  that  place. 

To  some,  it  seemed  clear,  as  the  Pillars  were  known  to 
mark  the  limits  of  the  world  in  the  west,  that  they  could 
not  be  Calpe  in  Europe  and  Abyla  in  Africa  that  repre- 
sent them  near  Gibraltar,  because  Hercules  himself  had 
gone  beyond  that  lion-shaped  rock  when  he  went  after 
and  secured  the  coveted  oxen  of  Geryon. 

Beyond  Gibraltar  near  Gades  there  was,  however,  a 
district  exactly  fitted  to  produce  such  remarkable  oxen  as 
those  of  Geryon;  a  place  where  the  pasturage  was  so  un- 
usually nourishing  that  it  was  necessary  to  let  blood 
seven  times  a  year  from  the  animals  that  fed  on  it ;  where 
such  rich  milk  was  given  that  it  had  to  be  thinned  with 
water  for  cheese  making ;  and  where  even  the  trees  of  one 


SPAIN  515 

species  in  the  neighborhood  gave  a  milk-like  fluid  when 
their  branches  were  cut. 

There,  on  the  small  island  of  Hera  south  of  Leon,  was 
the  temple  of  Hercules,  whose  twelve  labors  were  in- 
dubitably typified  by  its  distance  of  twelve  miles  from 
Gades;  and  in  the  temple  were  the  bronze  coltmins  that 
the  native  Iberians  declared  were  the  actual  Pillars 
themselves. 

The  wisdom  and  truthfulness  of  the  Oracle  of  the 
temple  had  drawn  to  it  all  who  sought  to  pry  into  the 
future  during  perhaps  2700  years — for  the  Phoenician 
Hercules  was  said  to  have  founded  a  temple  that  many 
years  before  Christ — and  those  many  visitors  had  given 
wide  publicity  to  the  mysterious  movements  of  the 
Temple  Spring.  It  was  a  fresh-water  fountain  rising 
nearly  to  the  level  of  the  sanctuary  floor ;  and  its  strange 
peculiarity  or  paradox  for  which  the  philosophers,  each 
with  a  different  explanation,  strove  to  account,  was  that 
when  the  tide  of  the  sea  rose  the  Spring  subsided  or  ceased 
to  run,  but  immediately  flowed  again  when  the  sea-tide  fell. 

At  least  one  of  the  scientists  of  antiquity  sat  in  the 
temple  day  after  day,  watching  the  Spring  and  saturating 
himself  with  the  subject  in  his  efforts  to  solve  the  puzzle 
which  no  doubt  could  have  been  made  clear  in  a  moment 
by  reference  to  the  oracle  right  at  hand,  an  easy  and 
obvious  line  of  inquiry  that  seems  never  to  have  occurred 
to  any  of  the  overwrought  investigators. 

The  most  popular  mortal  explanation  was  that  the 
bosom  of  the  ocean  rose  and  fell  as  the  earth,  which  was 
alive,  alternately  exhaled  and  drew  in  its  breath.  When 
it  exhaled,  its  breath  blew  against  the  current  of  the 
Spring  and  stopped  it ;  and  when  it  inhaled,  the  pressure 
on  the  current  was  removed  and  the  Spring  bubbled  up 
with  renewed  vigor. 


5i6  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

The  site  of  the  old  temple  is  occupied  by  the  church  of 
St.  Peter;  an  occupation  that  recalls  the  coincidence  that 
the  Pillars  of  the  gate  of  another  Saint,  St.  Stephen, 
guarded  the  "Troubled  Waters  of  Bethesda, "  the  only 
similar  intermittent  Spring  mentioned  in  the  Bible. 

Strabo;  III.  S-     §7-     III.  S-     §  3-io. 
Herodotus;  II.  44. 


Tamaricus 

The  sources  of  the  Tamaricus  River  possessed  certain 
powers  of  presaging  future  events.  They  were  three  in 
number,  separated  solely  by  an  interval  of  eight  feet,  and 
they  united  to  form  a  mighty  stream. 

They  were  often  dry  a  dozen  times  a  day,  and  some- 
times as  many  as  twenty,  when  there  was  not  the  slightest 
trace  of  water  in  them;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  another 
Spring  close  by  flowed  all  the  time  abundantly  and 
without  intermission. 

It  was  considered  an  evil  presage  if  those  who  wished 
to  see  these  Springs  found  them  dry,  as  was  proved  in  the 
case  of  the  legatus  Lartius  Licinius,  who  died  seven  days 
after  visiting  the  fountains  when  they  were  waterless. 

These  Springs  were  in  the  extreme  north  of  Spain,  in 
the  district  of  Cantabria  where  the  present  Basques 
originated.  The  Cantabrians  were  the  most  ferocious 
people  in  the  country  and  the  last  to  be  subdued,  and  had 
little  love  for  Lartius  who  was  the  Roman  governor;  and 
Pliny  was  perhaps  unduly  impressed  by  the  presage 
instanced,  as  he  had  not  yet  accepted  an  offer  of  $4000 
that  the  governor  had  made  for  the  author's  unused 
literary  notes. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  i8. 


SPAIN  517 

385 
Magnet-Like  Springs 

In  Spain  in  the  territory  of  the  Carrinenses  two  Springs 
burst  out  close  together  that  had  the  properties  of  the 
poles  of  a  magnet — one  absorbed  everything,  and  the 
other  threw  everything  out. 

Pliny;  II.  106. 


386 

False  Goldfish  Spring 

In  the  same  country  (Spain)  there  was  another  Spring 
which  gave  to  the  fish  in  it  the  appearance  of  gold — but 
when  taken  out  of  the  Spring  the  fish  were  seen  to  differ 
in  no  respect  from  ordinary  sorts. 

Pliny;  II.  106. 


387 

Ilerda 

It  was  by  means  of  the  Springs  of  Ilerda  that  Cassar, 
:n  the  first  year  of  the  Civil  War  of  49  B.C.,  conquered  all 
of  the  forces  that  Pompey  had  been  able  to  array  against 
him  in  Iberia. 

Having  crossed  the  Rubicon,  driven  Pompey  over 
into  Greece  and  made  himself  master  of  Italy  within  three 
months,  Cassar  left  Rome  in  the  early  part  of  April,  and 
in  four  weeks  transferred  his  activities  to  the  other  side 
of  the  world  where  Spain,  then  under  the  name  of  Iberia, 
still  offered  resistance;  and  there  the  Springs  of  Ilerda, 
having  been  drawn  over  to  his  side  in  the  contest,  working 
with  even  more  expedition  than  their  commander,  en- 


5i8  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

abled  him  to  bring  the  Spanish  campaign  to  a  close  in 
forty  days. 

Surrounding  the  Springs  and  their  streams  with  a  wall, 
he  prevented  the  opposing  forces  from  obtaining  any 
water  whatever,  and  thereby  reduced  them  to  such 
miseries  of  thirst  that  they  were  compelled  to  surrender. 

Penned  up  and  confined  in  the  parched  hills,  the  men 
of  Pompey's  generals  in  vain  exhausted  their  efforts  to 
secure  some  drops  of  moisture  to  satisfy  their  cravings. 

They  dug  feverishly  for  water  even  with  the  thin  blades 
of  their  swords,  working  their  way  deep  down  to  the 
underlying  rocks  of  the  hills,  without  finding  either  an 
underground  stream,  a  sweating  cavern  distilling  small 
drops,  or  any  place  where  gravel  was  disturbed  and 
moved  upward  by  a  little  Spring. 

Wherever  in  some  stony  pocket  the  soil  gave  evidence 
of  the  slightest  dampness,  they  tore  it  up  by  handfuls  and 
squeezed  the  noxious  clods  over  their  longing  mouths. 

When  their  dried-up  cattle  ceased  to  give  milk,  they 
punctured  the  bodies  of  these,  and  of  their  cavalry 
horses,  and  swarmed  about  them  to  suck  such  feeble 
streams  as  their  opposing  thrusts  could  express  from  the 
animals*  withering  frames. 

They  chewed  the  leaves  and  the  grass  for  their  juices ;  and 
stripped  the  trees  to  lick  the  dew  from  the  branches  and 
gnaw  the  sprigs  and  the  fibrous  stems,  to  extract  the  sap. 

Their  bodies  were  scorched  with  dryness;  ulcers  in- 
flamed their  throats;  and  their  parched  mouths  were 
roughened  by  their  scaly  tongues.  Their  veins  shrank 
and  their  lungs  shriveled  and  contracted ;  and  all  the  while 
their  wretchedness  was  increased  by  seeing  constantly 
below  them  the  pools  and  rivers  of  cool  and  sparkling 
water  the  well-guarded  wall  prevented  their  reaching. 

At  last  Afranius,  the  ranking  general,  dragged  himself 


SPAIN  519 

half  dead  to  the  conqueror's  camp  and  managed  to  gasp 
that,  penned  up  Hke  wild  beasts  and  unable  to  procure 
water,  his  men  could  no  longer  bear  their  bodily  pain  and 
mental  anguish,  and  confessed  themselves  at  Caesar's 
mercy. 

Today  Ilerda  is  Lerida,  and  doubtless  more  than  one 
of  its  townsmen  while  reading  of  the  terrible  days  his 
ancestors  passed  through  when  the  Springs  were  walled 
away  from  them,  has  lingered  over  Lucan's  page  in  mus- 
ing regret  that  the  making  of  gunpowder  was  not,  as  it 
is  at  the  present  time,  one  of  the  principal  industries  of 
the  town  in  the  bone-dry  year  of  B.C.  49. 

Lerida  lies  some  hundred  miles  to  the  west  of  Barcelona 
and  southwest  of  Andorra  one  of  the  smallest  Free  States 
of  the  world,  and  notable  as  well  for  being,  through  a 
political  trick  of  the  17th  century,  a  Spanish  tract 
within  the  French  frontier. 

A  modern  bridge  in  Lerida  spans  a  stream  fed  by  some 
of  its  Springs ;  and  this  bridge  is  built  on  the  foundations 
of  a  bridge  that  crossed  the  current  in  those  ancient  days 
of  drought ;  but  the  Springs  themselves,  fashioned  by  a 
still  better  Builder,  have  never  yet  in  any  part  required 
renewal. 

Lucan.     Pharsalia;  IV.  In.  366-372. 


388 

Aqum  Calid.e 

The  Aquae  Calidse,  or  Hot  Springs,  were  twelve  miles 
from  Barcelona,  and  the  tribe  that  lived  around  them  was 
named  the  Aquicaldenses. 

These  Springs  are  now  called  C aides. 

Pliny;  III.  4- 


520  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

389 
Spring  of  the  Ana 

The  Spring  of  the  Ana,  or  Anas,  rose  in  the  district  of 
Laminium.  The  river  is  now  the  Guadiana,  a  form  of 
Wadi  Ana  by  which  the  Arabs  expressed  the  river  of  Ana. 

The  waters  of  the  Spring  at  first  spread  out  into  a 
number  of  lakes;  then  they  contracted  into  a  narrow 
channel  and  suddenly  disappeared.  After  breaking  out 
on  the  surface  and  then  again  vanishing  and  reappearing 
a  number  of  times,  traveling  in  all  many  miles  under- 
ground, they  fell  into  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 

The  river,  as  now  known,  rises  eight  miles  northwest 
of  the  town  of  Alcaraz,  and  in  two  different  parts  of  its 
course  forms  the  boundary  between  Spain  and  Portugal. 
It  flows  through  the  territory  of  Don  Quixote,  and  retains 
its  fondness  for  underground  courses,  on  account  of  which 
and  its  narrowness,  it  is  navigable  for  less  than  a  tenth  of 
its  length  of  520  miles. 

Pliny;  III.  2. 


GERMANY 

390 
Danube 

Some  of  the  ancient  geographers  very  accurately 
described  the  Springs  of  the  Danube  as  being  in  Mt. 
Abnoba  opposite  Rauriciun. 

The  fish  near  its  source  were  poisonous  when  used 
as  food,  and,  therefore,  another  Spring  feeder  lower 
down,  and  beyond  which  the  harmful  fish  did  not 
swim,  was  called  the  source  of  the  river,  rather  than 
attribute  its  beginning  to  the  actual  but  inauspicious 
fountain. 

Receiving  the  name  of  Ister  in  the  latter  part  of  its 
course  it  flowed  into  the  Euxine  Sea  through  six  vast 
channels. 

Early  ancient  geographers  supposed  that  the  Ister 
flowed  into  the  Adriatic  opposite  the  Padus,  and  in  such 
volume  as  to  overcome  the  Sea's  saltiness  for  a  distance  of 
forty  miles  from  the  shore.  This  misconception  of  the 
location  of  the  river's  mouth  arose  from  a  literal  accept- 
ance of  the  account  of  the  course  taken  by  the  Argonauts 
who,  from  the  Danube,  reached  the  Adriatic  near  Ter- 
geste.  It  was  afterwards  assumed,  by  those  who  did  not 
feel  warranted  in  aspersing  the  log  of  the  Argo,  that  the 
crew  carried  the  ship  on  their  shoulders  across  the  Alps 
and,  with  the  aid  of  some  intermediate  streams,  down  to 
the  Adriatic;  a  method  of  proceeding  that  was  not  im- 
probable if,  as  the  Argonauts  averred,  they  transported 

521 


522  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

their  vessel  over  the  sands  of  Africa  for  many  days  at  a 
time.    (No.  322.) 

Although  Donaueschingen  is  now  generally  called  the 
source  of  the  Donau  or  Danube,  the  largest  river  of 
Europe,  its  more  minute  headwaters  are  a  tiny  stream 
flowing  from  some  rocks  of  the  old  Abnoba  mountain 
in  the  Black  Forest,  from  which  it  journeys  about  two 
thousand  miles  to  reach  its  terminus  on  the  borders  of 
the  Black  Sea,  the  ancient  Euxine. 

A  minute  and  charming  description  of  the  Danube's 
Spring  is  given  by  F.  D.  Millet,  who  writes; — "At  the 
head  of  a  pleasant  little  valley  high  up  among  the  bristling 
mountain  tops  of  the  Black  Forest,  a  tiny  stream  of  clear 
water  comes  tumbling  down  the  rocks,  and,  gathering 
strength  and  volume  from  an  occasional  Spring  or  a 
rivulet,  cuts  a  deep  channel  in  the  rich  soil  of  the  hay 
fields  and  dances  gaily  along  over  its  bed  of  glistening 
pebbles. 

"  To  the  north,  west  and  south  the  bold  summits  of  the 
watershed,  heavily  clothed  in  dark  masses  of  coniferous 
trees,  make  a  rugged  strongly  accented  skyline;  and  to 
the  east  delightful  vistas  of  sunny  slopes  and  fertile  inter- 
vales stretch  away  in  enchanting  perspective  to  the  hazy 
distance. 

"  This  little  stream  the  Brigach  with  its  twin  sister  the 
Brege  which  rises  about  ten  miles  further  to  the  south, 
are  the  highest  sources  of  the  mighty  River  Danube,  the 
great  waterway  of  Europe  since  earliest  history  and 
celebrated  for  ages  in  song,  gathering  on  its  banks  in  its 
course  of  nearly  2000  miles  to  the  Black  Sea  the  most 
varied  and  interesting  nationalities  in  the  civilized  world, 
and  unfolding  in  its  flow  the  most  remarkable  succession 
of  panoramas  of  natural  beauty  known  to  the  geographer. ' ' 

He  adds; — "The  Princes  of  Furstenberg  have  arbi- 


GERMANY  523 

trarily  declared  for  their  own  glorification  that  the  large 
Spring  in  their  pleasure  grounds  is  the  actual  source  of 
the  Danube.  They  have  surrounded  the  Spring  with 
expensive  masonry,  and  erected  a  stone  tablet  with  an 
inscription  giving  the  information,  among  other  things, 
that  that  spot  is  678  meters  above  sea  level,  and  2840 
kilometers  from  the  Black  Sea  by  way  of  the  Danube." 

Pliny;  IV.  34-     HI.  32.     XXXI.  19. 


391 

The  Rhine 

The  source  of  the  Rhenus,  the  Rhine  of  the  ancient 
Romans,  was  among  the  Helvetii  near  the  Hyrcynian 
Forest,  an  extremely  dense  woods  overgrown  with 
mighty  trees. 

The  length  of  the  river  was  said  by  some  to  be  500 
miles  and  by  others  to  be  750  miles. 

The  Romans  had  another  Rhenus,  a  tributary  of  the 
River  Po,  whose  sources  were  in  the  Apennines  about 
fifty  miles  above  Bologna;  this  was  called  the  Small 
Rhenus  to  distinguish  it  from  the  more  important 
stream. 

The  banks  of  the  shorter  river  produced  a  reed  that 
was  superior  to  all  others  for  making  arrows,  the  great 
quantity  of  pith  it  contained  leaving  so  little  weight  in 
the  rest  of  the  shaft  that  the  missile  clove  the  air  more 
readily  than  arrows  produced  from  any  other  reeds  in 
the  Roman  country. 

The  Rhine  of  the  moderns  has  three  sources  in  the  Swiss 
canton  of  the  Orisons;  the  most  easterly  rising  in  Mt, 
Crispalt,  7500  feet  above  sea  level,  is  joined  twelve  miles 
lower  down  by  the  second,  and  at  Richenau,  where  the 


524  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

river  assumes  the  name  Rhine,  by  what  is  called  its  chief 
source,  a  stream  from  the  glaciers  of  the  Vogelberg. 

The  river  broadens  out  to  form  Lake  Constance,  and 
later  produces  the  Falls  of  Schaffhausen  by  rushing  over 
a  rock  seventy  feet  in  height. 

Between  Mainz  and  Bonn  the  stream  presents  its 
finest  scenery,  and  the  land  it  runs  through  between  those 
places  produces  the  best  of  the  wines  that  take  the  river's 
name. 

The  Rhine  is  the  principal  and  the  largest  river  in  Ger- 
many, and  twelve  thousand  streams,  of  various  volume, 
either  directly  or  through  others  are  said  to  find  their  way 
into  it.  Its  course  of  about  900  miles  is  generally  north- 
northwest  and  ends  at  the  German  Ocean.  Its  name  re- 
produces the  sound  of  the  German  word  for  "clear,"  from 
which  it  is  supposed  to  have  been  derived. 

Strabo;  VII.  I.     §5.     IV.  3.     §3- 
Pliny;  XVI.  6s. 


Paralysis  Spring 

A  single  Spring  near  the  seashore  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
River  Ems,  was  the  only  source  of  fresh  water  for  the  army 
of  Germanicus  Caesar  on  one  occasion  in  his  German 
campaign. 

Within  two  years  of  use  this  Spring's  water  had  the 
effect  of  loosening  the  teeth  of  the  soldiers  and  causing  a 
total  relaxation  of  the  joints  of  the  knees;  but  fortunately 
a  remedy  for  those  affections  was  found  in  a  plant  called 
britannica  which  the  people  of  the  Fresii  nation  pointed 
out  to  the  troops. 

The  plant  proved  also  to  be  a  cure  for  quinsy  and  for 


GERMANY  525 

snake  bites,  provided  it  was  eaten  before  thunder  had 
been  heard. 

Pliny;  XXV.  6. 


393 

Mattiacum 

The  Springs  of  Mattiacum  were  boiling  hot  and  re- 
tained that  heat  for  three  days. 

They  were  called  Fontes  Mattiacae  and  also  Aquae 
Mattiacae  by  the  Romans,  and  many  relics  and  remains 
of  those  people  have  been  found  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  Springs  at  Wiesbaden  twenty-six  miles  west  of 
Frankfurt. 

The  remains  are  of  such  nature  as  indicate  that  they 
belonged  to  a  well-founded  settlement  that  was  visited 
by  many  invalids  who  left  the  place  with  grateful  testi- 
monies of  restored  health;  there  are  preserved  in  the 
town's  museimi  statues  and  altars,  and  baths  with  tablets 
commemorating  the  benefits  derived  from  the  waters  by 
people  who  had  sought  them  for  the  relief  of  various  dis- 
orders. They  are  still  as  popular  among  the  present 
generation  as  they  were  among  the  Romans,  and  after- 
wards, from  a  very  early  period,  among  the  Germans. 

The  principal  Spring,  in  an  aggregation  of  fourteen,  is 
the  Kochbrunnen,  the  Boiling  Spring,  which  has  a  tem- 
perature of  156°  Fahr.,  and  is  a  natural  pot  of  steaming 
water.  Its  outflow  is  of  such  volume  that  after  supplying 
the  various  bathing  establishments  of  the  present  resort 
there  are  streams  of  it  left  over  to  run  to  waste  through 
the  streets  and  sewers,  misting  the  atmosphere  and 
appreciably  heating  the  air. 

The  Adler,  the  Eagle  Spring,  is  nearly  as  copious  and 


526  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

but  slightly  less  hot,  with  a  surface  temperature  of  134 
degrees. 

The  waters  minister  still  as  effectively  as  of  old  to  those 
who  suffer  from  gout  or  rheumatism  or  cutaneous  affec- 
tions— but  it  is  now  so  well  known  that  nature  owes  good 
health  to  everyone  that  there  are  few  commemorative 
tablets  in  the  museum  that  are  less  than  a  double  decade 
of  centuries  old. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  17. 


RUSSIA.     SCYTHIA 

394 

EXAMP^US 

The  fountain  of  Exampaeus  was  small,  but  it  was  such 

an  exceedingly  bitter  Spring  that  its  overflow  running  into 
the  Hypanis  River  made  the  waters  of  that  large  stream 
acrid  and  undrinkable  throughout  four- ninths  of  its  course 
— that  part  of  it  which  ran  between  the  bitter  fountain 
and  its  mouth  on  the  northern  shore  of  the  Euxine  Sea. 

The  waters  of  the  Hypanis  were  sweet  throughout  the 
other  and  first  five-ninths  of  its  course  back  to  its  source, 
which  was  a  vast  lake  in  Scythia  called  The  Mother  of  The 
Hypanis,  and  around  which  droves  of  wild  horses  grazed. 

The  fountain  of  Exampaeus  was  on  the  borders  of  the 
Scythians  and  the  Alazones,  and  near  it  was  an  immense 
brass  cauldron,  six  fingers  in  thickness  and  made  entirely 
of  Scythian  arrow  tips,  each  one  of  which  had  represented 
an  inhabitant  of  Scythia. 

The  arrow-heads  had  been  the  counters  that  King 
Ariantas  employed  in  taking  the  census  of  his  subjects, 
and  the  scheme  very  likely  suggested  the  method  the 
British  government  still  employs  in  taking  the  country 
census  in  India,  where  the  illiterate  heads  of  families  are 
required  to  deposit  on  a  certain  day  in  front  of  their 
dwellings  a  stone  for  every  individual  in  the  household; 
and  those  stones,  collected  in  bags  and  sent  to  the  Census 
Bureau,  form  that  department's  basis  in  figuring  out  the 
population  of  the  country  districts. 

527 


528  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

The  Scythian  king  by  requiring  a  deposit  of  brass  arrow- 
heads acquired  a  large  quantity  of  metal  more  valuable 
than  the  stones  of  the  British,  and  he  used  it  for  casting 
the  immense  cauldron  which  was  set  up  by  the  fountain 
and  dedicated  to  it. 

The  accuracy  of  the  enumeration  was  provided  for  by 
threatening  death  to  anyone  who  failed  to  deposit  the 
requisite  tip. 

Another  large  exhibit  of  the  country,  perhaps  less  to  be 
relied  upon  than  the  census,  was  an  impression  made  in 
a  rock  by  one  of  the  feet  of  Hercules — the  impression 
was  a  yard  in  length. 

The  bitterness  of  the  Spring  was  attributed  to  sand- 
arach,  a  mineral  containing  arsenic,  and  has  led  to  its 
identification  with  the  source  of  the  Sinaja-Wada  River 
which  runs  into  the  Bog  River,  the  old  Hypanis. 

Ariantas,  the  king  who  had  the  bowl  made,  is  supposed 
to  have  been  a  ruler  of  Aria  and  to  have  designed  it  as  an 
offering  to  Buddha  whose  worship  is  conjectured  to  have 
extended  to  Syria. 

Vitruvius;  VIII. 
Herodotus;  IV.  52-  and  81. 


395 

LiBROSUS 

Librosus  was  a  hill,  in  the  country  of  the  Tauri,  from 
which  issued  three  Springs  that  inevitably  produced 
death,  but  without  pain. 

The  Tauri  were  savage  denizens  of  caves,  and  their 
country,  the  Tauric  Chersonesus  which  projected  south- 
ward into  the  Black  Sea  was  likened  to  the  Peloponnesus 
in  size  and  shape.  The  peninsula  is  now  called  the  Crimea 
and  its  battles  of  Sebastopol,  Balaclava  and  Inkerman  no 


RUSSIA.     SCYTHIA  529 

doubt  rivaled  the  work  of  the  three  deadly  Springs  of 
ancient  days. 

From  the  Tauric  Chersonesus  to  the  north,  through 
the  present  Ukraine  and  Russia,  stretched  the  frozen  and 
mysterious  land  of  one  day  and  one  night  to  the  year, 
where  dwelt  the  Scythians,  the  Sarmatians  and  other 
barbarous  Bolsheviki  of  the  ancients,  whose  descendants 
reverted  to  type  in  the  20th  century,  in  the  same  dis- 
trict, and  with  even  more  Tauric  rage. 

Pliny;  II.  io6.     Strabo;  VII.  4.     §  S- 


Lethe 

Slothful  Sleep  and  Mute  Rest  made  their  home  in  a 
dark  and  silent  cave  that  ran  deeply  into  a  mountain 
near  the  Cimmerians. 

From  the  bottom  of  the  rock  there  issued  the  waters  of 
Lethe  whose  rivulet,  flowing  in  a  pebbly  channel  and 
murmuring  softly  through  the  cave,  addressed  the  ear  in 
whispered  rhythm,  adding  its  urge  to  drowse  to  the  sleep 
inviting  odors  of  the  atmosphere,  laden  with  the  scent  of 
poppies  and  mind  relaxing  herbs  wafted  by  lazy  breezes 
from  the  beds  of  many  soporific  plants,  that  grew  in  dense 
profusion  around  the  cavern's  entrance. 

In  the  center  of  the  cave  was  set  Sleep's  couch  made  of 
night  black  ebony,  stuffed  with  dark  feathers  and  covered 
with  black  colored  clothing. 

The  rest  of  the  cave  was  packed  with  a  numberless  host 
of  unsubstantial  Dreams,  in  charge  of  three  master  mim- 
ics, and  thousands  of  their  understudies;  Morpheus, 
often  called  in  error  Sleep  himself,  an  imitator  of  any 
human  shape;  Phobetor,  equally  skillful  in  representing 
the  forms  of  brutes  of  every  sort;  and  Phantasmos  who 
34 


530  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

could  at  will  assume  the  appearance  of  any  combination 
of  objects  in  the  world  of  inanimate  nature. 

The  manner  in  which  these  consummate  mimics  were 
employed  is  minutely  described  in  the  case  of  the  dream 
that  was  arranged  to  apprize  Halcyone  of  the  loss  of  her 
husband  Ceyx  in  a  terrible  storm  at  sea.  Ovid's  picture 
of  this  tempest  is  unsurpassed  by  any  ancient  author,  and 
the  noise  and  commotion  of  the  wind  and  sea  are  placed 
in  dramatic  and  powerful  contrast  with  the  silence  and 
stillness  that  prevail  in  the  cave  of  the  Spring  of  Lethe. 

On  waking  from  the  dream,  Halcyone  hastens  to  the 
place  on  the  shore  from  which  Ceyx  sailed  away ;  and  her 
grief  as  the  ground  swell  of  the  wornout  storm  slowly 
bears  the  body  towards  her  arouses  the  pity  of  the  gods 
and  constrains  them  to  give  her  the  wings  of  the  King- 
fisher with  which  she  flies  to  the  floating  corpse,  on 
which  is  then  bestowed  the  same  bird  form,  forms  in 
which  their  attachment  has  become  no  less  proverbial 
than  the  calmness  of  the  ocean  during  the  fortnight 
around  the  shortest  day  of  the  year,  a  time  of  peaceful 
quiet  that  gives  its  name  of  Halcyon  Days  to  any  period 
of  perfect  happiness. 

Halcyone  was  the  daughter  of  .^olus  the  god  of  the 
winds,  and,  as  Eratosthenes  put  it  in  another  case,  when 
one  has  found  the  cobbler  who  sewed  up  -^olus'  winds  in 
the  leathern  sack,  then  one  may  expect  to  discover  the 
location  of  this  Spring  of  Lethe. 

The  Alcyonides,  which  might  be  taken  as  a  variation 
of  the  Kingfishers'  names,  were  Ice-birds  into  which  the 
daughters  of  the  giant  Alcyonides  were  changed  when 
they  threw  themselves  into  the  sea  after  Hercules  had 
killed  their  father. 

Ovid;  Meta.  XI.     Fable  7. 
Str&bo;!.  a.    $15. 


INDIA 

397 
The  Fountains  of  Calanus 

The  fountains  of  Calanus  are  only  a  figure  of  speech  in 
a  few  words,  but  they  are  interesting  as  perhaps  pointing 
in  the  direction  from  which  came  the  idea  of  a  Spring 
producing  something  other  than  water. 

Galanus  was  one  of  the  Brachmanes  that  Alexander 
had  interviewed  by  learned  men  of  his  retinue,  on  his 
visit  to  India  in  327  B.C.,  when  he  entered  the  district  of 
the  Five  Rivers,  the  Punjab,  where  he  founded  the  town 
of  Bucephalus,  named  after  his  favorite  horse  who  died 
there. 

Of  his  fountains,  Calanus  said; — "Formerly  there  was 
an  abundance  everywhere  of  corn  and  barley,  as  there  is 
now  of  dust;  fountains  then  flowed  with  water,  milk, 
honey,  wine  and  oil,  but  mankind  by  repletion  and  luxury 
became  proud  and  insolent,  and  Jupiter,  indignant  at  this 
state  of  things,  destroyed  all,  and  appointed  for  man  a 
life  of  toil." 

And  one  hundred  years  later,  in  238,  Springs  on  this 
Indian  model  appeared  in  Greek  literature  when  Apollon- 
ius  Rhodius  created  his  fountains  of  Hephaestus,  placing 
them,  too,  nearly  as  far  east  as  the  original  fountains  of 
Calanus. 

With  the  exception  of  what  Ctesias  wrote  about  the 
Far  East  as  the  result  of  information  gathered  between 
415  and  398  B.C.,  in  the  seventeen  years  that  he  spent  in 

531 


532  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

Persia  as  the  Court  physician,  almost  all  of  which  writings 
are  lost,  these  interviews  of  Alexander's  men  at  Taxila 
are  the  oldest  accounts  of  India  that  the  world  has  from 
outside  sources. 

Centuries  before  that  time,  however,  traders  and  travel- 
ers had  repeatedly  had  communication  with  the  Far  East 
and  brought  back  ideas  that  were  apparently  made  use 
of  by  the  leading  thinkers  of  the  West. 

Plato's  immortality  of  the  soul;  Thales'  theory  that 
water  was  the  primal  and  life-producing  element,  may  be 
seen  from  the  Calanus  interviews  to  have  been  concep- 
tions of  Eastern  philosophers  doubtless  long  before  they 
were  enunciated  in  the  West. 

Aristobulus  and  Onesicritus  were  Alexander's  chief 
inquirers  and  recorders,  and  besides  numerous  geographi- 
cal facts,  and  information  about  the  customs  of  the 
country,  that  they  learned  from  the  native  wise  men  with 
whom  they  talked,  through  interpreters,  they  were  told; 
— That  the  earth  was  of  spheroidal  form;  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  world's  formation  was  water;  that  the  soul  is 
immortal,  and  that  the  death  of  a  philosopher  was  birth 
to  a  real  and  happy  life;  that  diet  is  a  better  cure  for 
disease  than  medicine;  that  nothing  that  happens  to 
man  is  bad  or  good  (otherwise  the  same  person  would  not 
be  affected  with  sorrow  and  joy  by  the  same  things  on 
different  occasions). 

Socialism  has  not  even  yet  caught  up  with  all  of  the 
practices  of  the  ancient  idealists  as  Calanus  told  of  them; 
for  they  not  only  cultivated  the  ground  in  common,  but 
when  all  of  the  crops  were  collected  and  each  had  taken  a 
load  sufficient  for  his  subsistence  during  the  year,  the 
remainder  was  burned,  in  order  to  have  reason  for  renew- 
ing their  labor  and  not  remaining  inactive. 

The  Brachmanes  asserted  that  Bacchus  first  introduced 


INDIA  533 

the  vine  into  India,  as  was  proved  by  its  growing  wild 

only  in  that  country — which  would  indicate  that  not  only 
the  vine  but  Bacchus  himself  was  created  in  the  East ;  and 
one  cannot  but  "be  impressed,  also,  with  the  number  of 
philosophers  and  writers,  who  were  not  born  or  brought 
up  in  Central  Greece  but  on  the  Asiatic  part  of  the  con- 
tinent, or  near  the  door  through  which  the  sayings  of  the 
East  could  be  heard,  who  not  only  lived  near  the  door, 
but,  as  in  the  case  of  Thales,  the  most  renowned  of  the 
Seven  Wise  Men  and  the  originator,  before  600  B.C.,  of 
philosophy  and  mathematics  among  the  Greeks,  who 
possibly  passed  through  the  door  and  engaged  in  the 
discussions  of  those  who  were  more  advanced  in  thought 
than  they  were  themselves;  such,  among  many,  were 
Homer  and  Thales,  both  born  in  Asia  Minor;  Aristotle 
and  Theophrastus,  one  born  within  sight  of  it,  and  ihe 
other  not  many  miles  away. 

Strabo;  XV.  i.     J  64.  and  38-64. 


398 

Ganges 

The  Spring  of  the  Ganges  was  in  the  mountains  of 
Sc\^hia  whence  the  river  burst  forth  with  a  loud  noise 
and  hurled  itself  over  rocks  and  precipitous  steeps  until 
it  reached  the  plain,  where  it  quieted  down  and  broadened 
out  to  an  expanse  of  eight  miles  in  its  narrowest  part,  and 
attained  a  depth  of  six  hundred  feet. 

Its  waters  brought  down  gold;  and  its  snakes  were 
thirty  feet  long. 

The  people  in  the  country  of  the  Ganges  were  no  less 
remarkable  than  many  animals  that  are  known  through 
their  fossils. 


534  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

What  had  been  done,  in  describing  the  tribes  of  Africa, 
left  so  few  unused  permutations  of  anatomical  parts  that 
it  was  easier  to  employ  the  old  ones  than  to  make  new 
combinations,  and  the  result  is  a  striking  family  resem- 
blance between  the  human  monstrosities  of  Africa  and 
India. 

The  Pygmies  reappeared  in  India,  where  they  not  only 
battled  with  the  cranes  as  furiously  as  they  did  in  the 
West,  but  extended  their  warfare  and  fought  against  the 
partridges. 

The  people  who  lived  at  the  source  of  the  Ganges 
were  supported  by  the  smell  of  dressed  meats,  and  the 
fragrance  of  fruits  and  flowers  which  they  inhaled 
through  orifices  for  breathing,  as  they  were  not  pro- 
vided with  mouths.  The  dressed  meats  were,  however, 
not  wasted,  for  the  Amycteres,  who  were  without  nostrils, 
had  mouths  and  devoured  ever5rthing  that  came  within 
their  reach. 

The  Ganges  was  unknown  to  the  Greeks  who  wrote 
before  the  time  of  the  Indian  expedition  of  Alexander  the 
Great,  and  subsequent  writers  generally  admitted  that 
the  source  of  the  river  like  that  of  the  Nile  had  not  been 
located,  as  was  indeed  the  fact,  as  to  foreigners,  until  the 
19th  century,  although  several  Eastern  potentates  had 
endeavored  to  track  the  river  to  its  fountainhead,  among 
them  being  the  Chinese  Emperor  Tang-hi  who  sent  out  a 
body  of  Llamas  to  trace  its  beginnings. 

There  were,  however,  numerous  legends  concerning 
the  river's  origin;  that  of  the  Ramayana,  the  older  of  the 
two  classic  epics  of  India,  being  to  the  effect  that  Vishnu 
having  killed  the  sixty  thousand  sons  of  King  Sagara, 
and  reduced  them  to  ashes,  the  family  desired  to  sprinkle 
them  with  heavenly  water,  and  the  king  and  his  descen- 
dants spent  sixty  thousand  and  more  years  in  efforts  to 


INDIA  535 

induce  Brahma  to  permit  the  Ganga  to  descend  to  the 
earth  for  use  in  their  aspersions. 

At  last,  Bhagiratha,  one  of  Sagara's  descendants,  pre- 
vailed upon  Brahma,  and,  the  river  having  fallen,  it  docilely 
followed  Bhagiratha  as  he  took  his  way  to  the  unsprinkled 
ashes.  As  they  were  passing  the  place  of  St.  Jahun,  the 
river  carelessly  swept  away  some  of  the  sacrificial  pots 
that  were  near  the  path,  and  the  Saint  in  the  heat  of  his 
anger  drank  up  the  offending  stream.  Later,  at  the  inter- 
cession of  the  gods,  the  holy  being  was  induced  to  restore 
the  river,  which  he  did  by  letting  it  run  out  through  his 
ear,  and  the  ashes  of  the  sixty  thousand  were  wetted  with 
its  sacred  waters. 

In  another  poem,  the  Vishnu- Parana,  the  Spring  of 
the  Ganges  is  set  in  the  great  toe-nail  of  Vishnu's  left 
foot. 

A  third  account  places  the  Spring  in  the  moon,  around 
which  the  river  flows,  giving  the  satellite  a  large  part  of  its 
brightness,  before  falling  to  the  earth. 

Still  another  legend  exists,  and  it  describes  the  river  as 
flowing  from  the  mouth  of  Siva,  the  third  deity  of  the 
Indian  trinity. 

The  Indian  god  of  war,  Karttikeya,  is  called  the  son  of 
the  Ganges,  and  the  miraculous  manner  of  his  birth  is 
strangely  suggestive  of  the  creation  of  Mars  and  of  Urion 
as  Ovid  relates  them  in  the  fifth  book  of  the  Fasti. 

Many  hymns  are  addressed  to  the  Ganges,  and  the 
holiest  of  properties  are  attributed  to  it  wherever  it  flows, 
but  especially  at  Allahabad. 

It  being  accepted  that  the  muddy  color  of  the  river  is 
really  due  to  the  unguents  of  the  celestial  nymphs  who 
bathe  in  the  stream  in  heaven,  it  is  easy  for  the  devout  to 
believe  that  ablution  in  its  waters  washes  all  sins  away; 
but  even  those  who  live  a  thousand  miles  from  the  river 


536  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES 

will  have  their  offenses  forgiven  by  merely  crying ' '  Ganga^ 
Ganga." 

The  Ganges  is  now  said  to  burst  out  from  a  glacier 
more  than  halfway  up  a  Himalayan  mountain  four  miles 
high,  in  30  54  north  lat.,  and  79  7  east  long. 

Ten  miles  from  the  source  it  reaches  its  first  temple, 
that  of  Gangotri;  in  that  part  of  its  course  it  is  called 
Bhagiratha,  after  Sagara's  descendant  whose  efforts 
crowned  the  pious  works  of  six  hundred  centuries,  and  it 
does  not  receive  the  name  of  Ganges  until  it  has  run 
120  of  the  1500  miles  that  it  flows  to  reach  the  Bay  of 
Bengal. 

According  to  modern  measurements,  there  are  some 
stretches  of  the  stream  that  average  four  miles  in  width, 
and  some  places  where  it  has  a  depth  of  78  feet. 

Pilgrimages  to  the  holy  source  have  long  been  made, 
the  round  trip  occupying  six  years,  as  the  devoted  are 
required  to  measure  some  portions  of  the  distance  with 
their  bodies  prone. 

Pliny;  VI.  22.     Strabo;  XV.  i.     J  57- 
Ovid;  Fasti;  V.  In.  235. 


HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY 

399 
Homer 

When  Homer  in  despair  went  to  the  Oracle  at  Delphi, 
to  ask  where  he  was  born  and  what  was  his  Fatherland, 
the  Oracle  endeavored  to  minimize  its  evident  ignorance 
by  minutely  particularizing  concerning  his  death;  by  a 
pun  upon  Mother  Earth ;  and  by  dark  hints  that  he  would 
solve  the  riddle  of  life  in  failing  to  guess  a  children's 
conundrtun.  The  latter  seems  to  have  been  of  the 
What-was-it  kind,  with  an  entomological  answer,  to  the 
effect  that; — 

What  we  caught,  we  left  upon  the  shore; 
What  we  couldn't  catch,  away  we  bore. ' 

When  the  Oracle  had  virtually  admitted  it  did  not  know 
where  the  Poet  was  born,  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  a 
number  of  towns  with  a  yearning  for  a  poet's  birthplace 
from  opening  their  portals  to  show  where  the  homeless 
cradle  had  been  rocked.  This  led  to  an  appeal  to  internal 
evidence,  which,  more  acute  than  the  Oracle,  and  speak- 
ing principally  from  Homer's  dialect,  though  perhaps 
aided  by  the  supposition  that  he  must  have  lived  not 
far  from  the  plains  of  Troy,  and  maybe  helped  by  the 
law  that  seems  to  have  ruled  from  the  days  of  Hesiod — 

537 


538  HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

that  great  writers  must  be  born  by  little  rivers — enabled 
ancient  historians  to  select  Smyrna  as  the  place  where 
Homer  first  opened  the  eyes  that  by  losing  their  sight 
gave  him  the  name  which  for  well  on  to  three  thousand 
years  has  taken  the  place  of  Melesigenes,  the  natal  name 
given  him  by  his  mother. 

'  Herodotus;  Life  of  Homer. 


400 

Meles 

Now,  after  the  lapse  of  so  many  centuries,  the  reading 
world  might  almost  forgive  Fate  for  the  affliction  that 
substituted  a  short  and  simple  dialect  designation  for  the 
blind  in  lieu  of  Melesigenes,  which  his  mother  selected  to 
convey  the  message  that  her  son  was  "born  on  the  banks 
of  the  Meles." 

The  Father  of  History,  who  was  his  fellow  countryman 
of  a  later  age,  asserts  that  Homer  was  a  very  successful 
school  teacher,  at  Chios ;  that  he  amassed  a  fortune ;  and 
that  he  married  and  had  two  daughters. 

If  he  was  born  in  the  year  950  B.C.,  then  he  appeared  in 
Smyrna  just  one  hundred  years  after  the  descendants  of 
the  son  of  Apollo  and  Creusa  founded  Ionia  and  started 
the  Grecian  settlement  of  which  Smyrna  became  a  cele- 
brated city,  and  a  city  that  has  flourished  almost  con- 
tinuously to  the  present  day  when,  with  a  change  of  only 
a  few  miles  in  location,  it  has  nearly  two  hundred  thou- 
sand inhabitants,  and  a  volume  of  traffic  that  supports 
several  steam  railroads. 

The  Poet's  existence  started  amid  the  joyous  revels  of 
a  frolicsome  night-fete  around  the  Springs  of  the  Meles,  * 
forming  a  small  but  most  beautiful  river  now  known  as 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY         539 

the  Sarabat,  in  Asia  Minor;  and  it  ended,  during  a  jour- 
ney to  Athens,  in  the  island  of  los,  a  tiny  particle  of  the 
Cyclades  that  is  now  named  Nio.  There,  close  by  the 
sea,  his  body  was  laid  at  rest ;  and  there,  perhaps  because 
of  not  appreciating  the  Oracle's  pun,  that  while  he  had 
no  Fatherland  that  island  would  be  his  Motherland,  the 
natives  soon  claimed  that  his  Mother,  Clymene,  had 
lived,  and  showed  a  tomb  to  make  good  their  asser- 
tion. 

One  may  pleasantly  imagine  the  life  that  intervened 
between  these  two  events.  It  was  no  doubt,  as  the  Oracle 
predicted,  both  fortunate  and  unfortunate,  as  many  at 
home  could  have  told  to  the  saving  of  a  tiresome  journey 
to  distant  Delphi,  to  hear  it  in  hexameters  which  the  Poet 
probably  improvingly  recast  as  he  listened  to  the  me- 
chanical drone  of  the  mouthpiece  of  the  Oracle  whose 
words,  reduced  to  writing  and  hung  near  a  brazen  statue 
of  the  enquirer,  became  a  part  of  the  Temple's  permanent 
exhibits.' 

Homer  had  traveled  much  before  he  became  blind,  and 
had  seen  the  sites  and  the  cities  that  he  sang  of ;  and  the 
loss  of  his  eyesight  naturally  made  even  more  vivid  and 
absorbing  the  images  and  recollections  that  a  wonderful 
and  crowded  memory  redisplayed  before  his  mental  eye, 
to  the  accompaniment  of  the  low  music  made  by  the  little 
Springs  of  the  Meles  as  he  ruminated  in  the  cool  shelter 
of  his  favorite  cavern  study — for  the  Springs  had  an  ad- 
joining cave,  and  in  that  cave  Homer  was  wont  to  com- 
pose his  poetry,  much  as  Numa  prepared  his  laws  to  the* 
tinkle  of  the  Spring  streams,  and  the  soft,  sinuous  ripple 
of  the  flowing  water  in  the  cave  of  Egeria;  and  here,  in 
childhood  no  doubt  began  that  affection  that  grew  to  the 
love  of  Springs  which  constantly  flowed  from  his  stylus 
and  traced  in  every  book  of  the  IHad  and  the  Odyssey 


540  HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

their  names,  or  descriptions  of  their  beauties,  or  a  refer- 
ence to  their  traditions,  though  nowhere  in  his  writings 
has  he  mentioned  the  Meles,  or  even  Smyrna  itself  by 
their  names. 

The  Iliad  was  not  only  composed  beside  a  Spring  but 
it  might  be  said  that  it  begins  and  ends  in  a  Spring.  A 
Spring  is  mentioned  in  the  very  first  line  of  its  version  in 
English — the  "Direful  Spring  of  woes  unnumbered," 
from  which  flows  the  subject  of  the  whole  epic;  and  half  a 
page  of  the  last  scene,  in  the  last  book,  is  devoted  to 
Niobe  and  her  Spring  on  Sipylus. 

In  both  poems.  Springs  are  referred  to  more  often  than 
any  other  beauty  of  nature,  except  possibly  the  sky ;  but 
those  of  his  own  creation  seem,  for  the  most  part,  to  be 
fancy  fountains  that  never  rose  through  either  Earth  or 
Sea,  for  when  they  are  not  placed  in  fabulous  or  unknown 
lands  they  cannot  be  found  in  what  should,  presumably, 
be  their  present  locations.  In  them  he  may  possibly  have 
described  Springs  he  had  really  seen,  but  if  such  was. the 
case  it  is  a  pity  he  concealed  their  actual  whereabouts, 
for  more  charming  fountains  with  lovelier  surroundings 
it  would  require  great  effort  to  imagine. 

He  sometimes  devotes  the  better  part  of  a  page  to  the 
enumeration  of  their  attendant  beauties,  and  these 
pictures  are  gems  of  minutely  executed  word  painting 
that  seem  to  be  done  in  chromatic  inks  and  with  all  the 
vividness  and  detail  of  a  finely  focused  color  camera. 
The  genius  of  these  gems  in  the  Greek  has  perhaps  been 
best  reproduced  by  Pope,  and  the  extracts  that  follow 
are  therefore  from  his  English  translation. 

The  Iliad's  chief  Springs  are  those  of  Mount  Ida. 

'  Pausanias;  VII.  5. 
3  Pausanias;  X.  24. 
*  Pausanias;  VII.  5. 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY         541 

401 
Fountains  of  Mt.  Ida 

Mt.  Ida,  which  he  repeatedly  mentions  as,  "The  fair^ 
nurse  of  Fountains,"  or,  "The  Fountful  Ida,"  or,  "Ida 
whose  echoing  hills  are  heard  resounding  with  a  hundred 
rills, "  produced  many  streams,  but  of  all  the  rivers  that 
rose  from  those  hundred  rills,  the  two  that  flowed  nearest 
to  Troy  were  the  Scamander  and  the  Simois. 

s  Iliad;  VIII.  line  S5-     XII.  120.     Iliad;  XIV.  340. 


402-403 

Scamander.     Simois 

The  Scamander,  as  it  was  named  by  men,  was  called 
Xanthus  by  the  gods. 

Its  source  was  near  the  top  of  one  of  the  crests  of  the 
five  thousand-foot  high  range,  but  Homer  has  placed  it 
by  the  city's  walls,  and  in  telling  of  the  combat  betweer 
Hector  and  Achilles,  he  describes  its  remarkable  hot  and 
cold,  double  Springs;  these  have  been  the  despair  of 
identifiers,  but  they  may  really  have  existed  in  former 
times  for  there  are  still  hot  Springs  near  the  Tuzla  River 
which  falls  into  the  .^gean  Sea  north  of  Cape  Lectum. 

As  Hector,  now  a  piteous  spectacle  of  panic,  frantically 
endeavors  to  escape  from  Achilles  the  heroes  dart  about 
the  field ;  they  spring,  now  here,  and 

Next  by  Scamander's  double  source  they  bound,* 
Where  two  famed  fountains  burst  the  parted  ground; 
This  hot  through  scorching  clefts  is  seen  to  rise, 
With  exhalations  streaming  to  the  skies; 
That  the  green  banks  in  summer's  heat  o'erflows, 
Like  crystal  clear,  and  cold  as  winter  snows; 
Each  gushing  fount  a  marble  cistern  fills, 


542  HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

Whose  polished  bed  receives  the  falHng  rills; 
Where  Trojan  dames  (ere  yet  alarmed  by  Greece) 
Washed  their  fair  garments  in  the  days  of  peace. 
By  these  they  passed,  one  chasing,  one  in  flight, 
(The  mighty  fled,  pursued  by  stronger  might) ; 
Swift  was  the  course;  no  vulgar  prize  they  play. 
No  vulgar  victim  must  reward  the  day; 
(Such  as  in  races  crown  the  speedy  strife) ; 
The  prize  contended  was  great  Hector's  life. 
Thus  three  times  round  the  Trojan  wall  they  fly, 
And  gazing  gods  lean  forward  from  the  sky. 

In  summer  many  of  the  Grecian  rivers  are  shallow,  and 
often  nearly  dry,  but  a  heavy  rain  will  suddenly  swell 
them  to  deep  and  rapid  torrents,  and  Homer  utilized  this 
peculiarity  to  make  it  appear  that  even  the  rivers  of  Troy 
were  loyal  and  rallied  to  the  defense  of  their  city;  thus, 
in  battles  on  their  banks,  combatants,  who  had  just 
saved  themselves  from  the  sword,  were  often  swallowed 
up  by  the  sudden  and  swift  expansion  of  the  streams. 
The  Scamander  is  even  given  voice  sometimes  and  shouts^ 
to  its  ally,  the  Simois,  instructions  how  to  act  and  whom 
to  overwhelm,  and  indeed  the  final  obliteration  of  the 
city  is  credited  to  the  rivers  themselves,  in  whose  sands  it' 
was  buried  from  sight ; — 

Now  smoothed  with  sand,  and  leveled  by  the  flood, 
No  fragment  tells  where  once  the  wonder  stood; 
In  their  old  bounds  the  rivers  roll  again, 
Shine  'twixt  the  hills,  or  wander  o'er  the  plain.' 

The  Scamander  received  its  name  of  Xanthus  because 
of  its  yellow  color,  a  color  that  led  to  its  recognition  in 
the  modern  Mendere ;  it  possessed  the  power  of  imparting 
a  beautiful  tint  to  hair  and  wool ;  and  it  added  a  subtile 
grace  of  loveliness  to  the  skin  of  those  who  bathed  in  its 
waters;  and  for  that  reason  Juno,  Minerva  and  Venus 
repaired  to  it  to  heighten  the  effect  of  their  charms  when 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY         543 

preparing  themselves  for  the  exhibition  that  yielded  to 
the  handsomest  the  much  coveted  prize  of  Paris'  golden 
apple;  the  apple  that,  as  disastrous  to  its  country  as  the 
apple  of  Eden  was  to  the  world,  led,  first,  to  the  fall  of 
Helen,  and,  finally  to  the  fall  of  Troy. 

The  story  of  Troy  will  always  be  alluring  to  anyone  of 
English  blood  who  likes  the  legend  that  Brutus,  a  son,  or 
great-grandson  of  ^neas,  founded  Britain  when  the 
country  was  occupied  by  a  small  number  of  giants,  and 
built  himself  a  castle  on  the  banks  of  the  Thames  in  the 
city  that  he  called  New  Troy. 

Three  hundred  years  before  the  Christian  Era  the 
remains  of  Troy  had  not  disappeared,  and  Alexander, 
while  there  were  still  worlds  to  conquer,  turned  aside  and 
left  his  army  to  the  care  of  others,  and  went  by  himself  to 
drink  from  the  Springs  of  Scamander  and  view  the  ruins 
of  the  ancient  city,  but  in  the  second  decade  of  the 
Twentieth  Century  the  discussion  begun  seventeen 
hundred  years  before,  about  the  site  of  Troy,  is  not  yet 
settled,  and  zealous  excavators  are  still  burrowing  to  get 
at  the  root  of  the  question.  But,  according  to  the 
weightiest  authorities,  so  far,  the  ten  years'  war  ended  in 
1 1 84  B.C.,  and  the  city  stood  by  the  present  ruins  of 
Hissarlik,  3>^  miles  from  the  Dardanelles:  the  old  course 
of  the  modern  Mendere  River  was  the  bed  of  the  Sca- 
mander, and  its  tributary  the  Dumbrek  Su  was  the 
Simois:  Mt.  Ida  is  now  Kaz  Dagh,  and  Gargarus  is  its 
highest  peak. 

After  the  destruction  of  Troy,  it  took  Ulysses  ten  years '  ° 
to  find  his  way  back  to  his  home  in  Ithaca;  but  seven  of 
these  years  produced  only  one  new  Spring,  for  all  of  that 
period  was  spent  in  one  place,  the  Island  of  Calypso.  If 
that  had  been  his  first  stop  the  peoples  of  the  ^gean  Sea 
would  have  had  no  cause  for  regret,  for  at  the  outset  his 


544  HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

people  overran  and  robbed  many  settlements.  But'* 
occasionally  they  met  what  they  richly  deserved,  as  they 
did  at  Laestrygonia. 

6  Iliad;  XXII.  187. 
r  Iliad;  XXI.  381. 

8  Iliad;  XII.  32. 

9  Iliad;  XII.  43. 
"Odyssey;  XIII.  343. 
"Odyssey;  VII.  346. 
'=  Odyssey;  IX.  44. 


404-405 
L^STRYGONIA.      LoTOS-LAND 

A  reconnoitering  party  having  been  landed  was  pro- 
ceeding along  the  road  to  the  city  of  Laestrygonia, 

When  lo!  they  met,  beside  a  crystal  spring,'' 
The  daughter  of  Antiphates  the  king; 
She  to  Artacia's  silver  streams  came  down 
("Artacia's  streams  alone  supply  the  town) : 

This  delightfully  dissembling  little  damsel  of  the  crystal 
Spring  cheerfully  guided  them  to  her  royal  parents  wha 
turned  out  to  be  giant  cannibals  and  ravenously  eat  up  a. 
large  part  of  the  party  before  the  fleet  could  be  got  to- 
sea  again. 

Being  driven  into  unknown  oceans  by  a  nine-day 
tempest,  Ulysses  touched  at  the  land  of  Lotos,  "and** 
Springs  of  water  found";  and  then  reached  Lachaea, 

'3  Odyssey;  X.  119.  ;  ' 

'4  Odyssey;  IX.  97. 


406 

Lach^a 

After  leaving  the  land  of  Lotos  he  stopped  at  Lachaea. 
where  he  found  a  cavern  fountain,  and  one  seems  easily*^ 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY         545 

to  discern  the  impress  and  picture  of  the  Meles  cavern 
Springs  in  nearly  all  of  the  Springs  that  the  Poet  created, 
for  almost  invariably  the  Homer-made  fountains  are 
furnished  with  grottos.    Of  Lachasa,  he  says; — 

Opposed  to  the  Cyclopean  coast,  there  lay 
An  isle,  whose  hills  their  subject  fields  survey; 
Its  name  Lachasa,  crowned  with  many  a  grove; 
And  here  all  products  and  all  plants  abound, 
Sprung  from  the  fruitful  genius  of  the  ground ; 
Fields  waving  high  with  heavy  crops  are  seen. 
And  vines  that  flourish  in  eternal  green. 
Refreshing  meads  along  the  murmuring  main, 
And  fountains  streaming  down  the  fruitful  plain. 

High  at  the  head,  from  out  the  caverned  rock, 
In  living  rills  a  gushing  fountain  broke; 
Around  it,  and  above,  forever  green, 
And  bushy  alders  formed  a  shady  scene. 

Leaving  this  lovely  home  of  caverned  fount  and  falling 
water,  the  party  visited  the  island  of  the  god  of  the  Sun. 

's  Odyssey;  IX.  i6i.  133  &  is6. 


407 

Apollo's  Isle 

At  this  island  the  party  make  another  stop,  and. 

Then,  where  a  fountain's  gurgling  waters  play,'* 
They  rush  to  land,  and  end  in  feasts  the  day, 
Where  in  a  beauteous  grotto's  cool  recess 
Dance  the  green  Nereids  of  the  neighboring  seas. 

Here  the  wanton  and  cruel  crew  killed  the  god's  sacred 
cattle  by  heaps,  and  as  soon  as  they  put  to  sea  again  the 
offended  deity  revenged  himself  with  a  nine-day  storm '^ 
that  destroyed  the  bark  of  the  depredators,  and  everyone 


546  HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

in  it  except  Ulysses  who  clung  to  a  plank  and  was  washed 
ashore  at  Ogygia.  •?;>. 

'<>  Odyssey;  XII.  314  &  361. 
'7  Odyssey;  XII.  53a. 


408 

Ogygia 

All  sense  of  locality  having  been  lost  in  the  turmoil  of 
the  tempest  and  the  many  shiftings  of  its  raging  winds, 
Ulysses  can  only  say  of  the  position  of  this  island,  on 
which  the  waves  providentially  cast  him  alive,  that  it  is; 

Ogygia  named,  in  Ocean's  watery  arms;'* 
Where  dwells  Calypso,  dreadful  in  her  charms! 
Remote  from  gods  or  men  she  holds  her  reign, 
Amid  the  terrors  of  a  rolling  main. 

It  was  not  until  he  had  been  detained  here  seven  years 
that  Pallas'  persevering  importunities  induced  Jove  to 
send  Hermes  to  the  charmer  to  compel  Ulysses'  release. 

The  messenger  journeyed  by  air  to,  and  then  through 
the  sea,  and; — 

Then  Hermes,  rising  from  the  azure  wave, 
Betrod  the  path  that  winded  to  the  cave. 
Large  was  the  grot,  in  which  the  nymph  he  found, 
(The  fair-haired  nymph  with  every  beauty  crowned). 
She  sate  and  sung;  the  rocks  resound  her  lays. 
The  cave  was  brightened  with  a  rising  blaze; 
Cedar  and  frankincense,  an  odorous  pile, 
Flamed  on  the  hearth,  and  wide  perfumed  the  isle; 
While  she  with  work  and  song  the  time  divides, 
And  through  the  loom  the  golden  shuttle  guides. 
Without  the  grot  a  various  sylvan  scene 
Appeared  around,  and  groves  of  living  green; 
Poplars  and  alders  ever  quivering  played, 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY         547 

And  nodding  cypress  formed  a  fragrant  shade; 

On  whose  high  branches,  waving  with  the  storm, 

The  birds  of  broadest  wing  their  mansions  form, — 

The  chough,  the  sea-mew,  the  loquacious  crow, — 

And  scream  aloft,  and  skim  the  deeps  below. 

Depending  vines  the  shelving  cavern  screen. 

With  purple  clusters  blushing  through  the  green. 

Four  limpid  fountains  from  the  clefts  distil; '» 

And  every  fountain  pours  a  several  rill. 

In  mazy  windings  wandering  down  the  hill : 

Where  bloomy  meads  with  vivid  greens  were  crowned, 

And  glowing  violets  threw  odors  round, 

A  scene,  where,  if  a  god  should  cast  his  sight, 

A  god  might  gaze,  and  wander  with  delight! 

Calypso  having  been  forced  to  release  him  from  this 
delightful  retreat,  Ulysses  constructed  a  raft  and,  after 
seventeen  days  on  the  ocean,  reached  Scheria,  then  "the^° 
favored  isle  of  Heaven"  and  now  Corcyra,  and  landed** 
near  the  city  of  Phasacia. 

■«  Odyssey;  XII.  532;  VII.  328. 
'» Odyssey;  V.  90. 
'"  Odyssey;  VII.  3S3;  V.  438  et  seg. 
"  Odyssey;  VI.  290. 


409 
PHiEACIA 

Here,  in  a  suburban  mead,  he  met  the  king's  beautiful 
daughter,  Nausicaa,  washing  by  a  Spring.  A  very  pleas- 
ant acquaintance  was  immediately  established  and,  after 
an  interchange  of  numerous  courtesies,  they  set  out  for 
the  town,  and  he  says ; — 

Nigh  where  a  grove  with  verdant  poplars  crowned, 
To  Pallas  sacred,  shades  the  holy  ground. 
We  bend  our  w-ay:  a  bubbling  fount  distils'' 
A  lucid  lake,  and  thence  descends  in  rills, 


548  HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

Around  the  grove,  a  mead  with  lively  green 
Falls  by  degrees,  and  forms  a  beauteous  scene; 
Here  a  rich  juice  the  royal  vineyard  pours, 
And  there  the  garden  yields  a  waste  of  flowers. 
Hence  lies  the  town,  as  far  as  to  the  ear 
Floats  a  strong  shout  along  the  waves  of  air. 

While  Nausicaa,  to  prevent  gossip  among  the  towns- 
people, proceeds  to  the  city  alone,  Ulysses  rests  here  for  a 
short  time  and  then  follows  her.    He  describes  how 

Close  to  the  gates  a  spacious  garden  lies, 
From  storms  defended  and  inclement  skies. 
Four  acres  was  the  allotted  space  of  ground, 
Fenced  with  a  green  enclosure  all  around. 
Tall  thriving  trees  confessed  the  fruitful  mould: 
The  reddening  apple  ripens  here  to  gold. 
Here  the  blue  fig  with  luscious  juice  o'erflows, 
With  deeper  red  the  full  pomegranate  glows: 
The  branch  here  bends  beneath  the  weighty  pear, 
And  verdant  olives  flourish  round  the  year. 
The  balmy  spirit  of  the  western  gale 
Eternal  breathes  on  fruits,  untaught  to  fail: 
Each  dropping  pear  a  following  pear  supplies, 
On  apples  apples,  figs  on  figs  arise: 
The  same  mild  season  gives  the  blooms  to  blow. 
The  buds  to  harden,  and  the  fruits  to  grow. 
Here  are  the  vines  in  early  flower  descried, 
Here  grapes  discolored  on  the  sunny  side, 
And  there  in  autumn's  richest  purple  dyed. 

Beds  of  all  various  herbs,  forever  green. 
In  beauteous  order  terminate  the  scene. 

Two  plenteous  fountains  the  whole  prospect  crowned:** 
This  through  the  gardens  leads  its  streams  around. 
Visits  each  plant,  and  waters  all  the  ground ; 
While  that  in  pipes  beneath  the  palace  flows, 
And  thence  its  current  on  the  town  bestows: 
To  various  use  their  various  streams  they  bring. 
The  people  one,  and  one  supplies  the  king. 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY         549 

These  fountains  passed,  Ulysses  gains  admission  to  the 
palace.  The  king,  Alcinous,  entertains  him  royally;  loads 
him  with  a  great  store  of  precious  gifts;  and  finally  fur- 
nishes a  boat  and  crew  who  in  less  than  a  day  convey  him 
to  his  own  dominions. 

''Odyssey;  VI.  351. 
»J  Odyssey;  VII.  169. 


410 

Island  of  Ithaca 

The  landing  is  made  in  a  bay  near  the  port  of  Phorcys;'* 
the  rocky  shore  slopes  upward  here  to  where ; — 

High  at  the  head  a  branching  olive  grows, 
And  crowns  the  pointed  cliffs  with  shady  boughs. 
Beneath,  a  gloomy  grotto's  cool  recess 
Delights  the  Nereids  of  the  neighboring  seas. 
Where  bowls  and  urns  were  formed  of  living  stone, 
And  massy  beams  in  native  marble  shone, 
On  which  the  labors  of  the  nymphs  were  rolled, 
Their  webs  divine  of  purple  mixed  with  gold. 
Within  the  cave  the  clustering  bees  attend 
Their  waxen  works,  or  from  the  roof  depend. 
Perpetual  waters  o'er  the  pavement  glide;'* 
Two  marble  doors  unfold  on  either  side; 
Sacred  the  south,  by  which  the  gods  descend; 
But  mortals  enter  at  the  northern  end. 

Ulysses,  who  is  sound  asleep,  is  carried  ashore  to  the 
cave  by  the  crew  who  then  unload  his  treasure  of  presents 
from  Phaeacia  and,  having  piled  them  up  under  the  olive 
tree,  row  away.  He  is  awakened  by  Pallas  who  tells  him 
that  he  is  in  Ithaca,  where 

Soft  rains  and  kindly  dews  refresh  the  field. 
And  rising  springs  eternal  verdure  yield,'* 


550  HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

and  adds, 

Behold  the  port  of  Phorcys!  fenced  around 
With  rocky  mountains,  and  with  olives  crowned. 
Behold  the  gloomy  grot!  whose  cool  recess*^ 
Delights  the  Nereids  of  the  neighboring  seas. 

Ulysses,  having  hidden  his  treasures  in  the  cavern, 
learns,  in  a  talk  with  the  goddess  under  the  olive  tree,  all 
about  Penelope,  his  wife,  and  her  numerous  hungry 
suitors.  Pallas  then  changes  him  into  a  wretched  looking 
old  beggar  in  rags,  and  he  goes  to  the  house  of  Eumseus,'* 
his  loyal  swineherd,  "Where  Arethusa's  sable  water*' 
glides, "  to  whom  he  passes  himself  off  as  a  Cretan.^"* 

»4  Odyssey;  XIII.  114. 
»s  Odyssey;  XIII.  132. 
^'Odyssey;  XIII.  298. 
»7  Odyssey;  XIII.  SOS- 
'S Odyssey;  XIV.  5. 
'9  Odyssey;  XIII.  470. 
3"  Odyssey;  XIV.  229.     XVI.     61. 


410a 

The  Pharian  Isle 

Shortly  before  the  king's  return  to  Ithaca  his  son  Tele- 
machus,  who  had  become  more  and  more  anxious  as  the 
years  rolled  by  and  extended  Ulysses'  long  delay  in  reach-^ ' 
ing  home,  had  set  out  to  make  enquiries  in  Sparta,  where 
he  visited  Menelaus  from  whom  he  received  an  account 
of  that  monarch's  adventures  after  leaving  Troy  with^* 
Helen.  This  account  was  to  the  effect  that  he  had  been^^ 
blown  to  the  Egyptian  coast  and  was  weather-bound 
where ; — 

High  o'er  a  gulfy  sea,  the  Pharian  isle 
Fronts  the  deep  roar  of  disemboguing  Nile: 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY         551 

Her  distance  from  the  shore,  the  course  begun 
At  dawn,  and  ending  with  the  setting  sun, 
A  galley  measures;  when  the  stifFer  gales 
Rise  on  the  poop,  and  fully  stretch  the  sails. 
There,  anchored  vessels  safe  in  harbor  lie, 
Whilst  limpid  springs  the  faihng  cask  supply.** 

There,  after  three  weeks'  detention,  Menelaus  cap- 
tured the  sea-god  Proteus  and  compelled  him  to  tell  how 
to  propitiate  the  winds,  and  also  what  had  happened  to 
his  friends  in  the  storm-scattered  fleet.  With  news  of 
Ulysses  thus  obtained,  Telemachus,  evading  an  at-^^ 
tempted  ambush  by  the  suitors,  returns  to  Ithaca.^* 

31  Odyssey;  II.  241. 
3' Odyssey;  IV.  421. 

33  Odyssey;  IV.  471. 

34  Odyssey;  IV.  486. 

35  Odyssey;  IV.  896. 
3<  Odyssey;  XV.  33- 


410b 

Island  of  Ithaca 

Going  at  once  to  Eumaeus'  cottage  Telemachus  there' ^ 
meets  his  father  who  is  changed  back  to  his  own  form  for 
recognition,  and  then  retransformed  into  the  beggar,  in'* 
whose  shape,  and  still  unknown  to  the  swineherd,  he  sets 
out  with  the  latter  for  the  palace,  and  walking  along; — 

Now  pass't  the  rugged  road,  they  journey  down 
The  cavemed  way  descending  to  the  town, 
Where,  from  the  rock,  with  liquid  drop  distils 
A  limpid  foimt;  that  spread  in  parting  rills^' 
Its  current  thence  to  serve  the  city  brings; 
An  useful  work,  adorned  by  ancient  kings. 
Neritus,  Ithacus,  Polyctor,  there, 
In  sculptured  stone  immortalized  their  care, 
In  marble  urns  received  it  from  above, 


552  HOMER'S  SPRINGS 

And  shaded  with  a  green  surrourding  grove; 
Where  silver  alders,  in  high  arches  twined, 
Drink  the  cool  stream,  and  tremble  to  the  wind. 
Beneath,  sequester'd  to  the  nymphs,  !s  seen 
A  mossy  altar,  deep  embowered  in  green; 
Where  constant  vows  by  travelers  are  paid, 
And  holy  horrors  solemnize  the  shade. 

At  this  fountain  Eumaeus  prefaces  a  prayer  with  an 
invocation  to  the; — 

Daughters  of  Jove!  who  from  the  ethereal  bowers 
Descend  to  swell  the  springs,  and  feed  the  flowers  !<• 
Nymphs  of  this  fountain !  to  whose  sacred  names 
Our  rural  victims  mount  in  blazing  flames! 
To  whom  Ulysses'  piety  preferred 
The  yearly  firstlings  of  his  flock  and  herd; — 

and  concludes  with  a  suppHcation  for  the  return   of 
Ulysses .     (See  No.  410.) 

37  Odyssey;  XVI.  ii. 

38  Odyssey;  XVI.  1 86  &  476. 
3»  Odyssey;  XVII.  233. 

*"  Odyssey;  XVII.  284. 


411 

Unnamed  Springs 

The  numerous  other  Springs  that  are  accessory  to 
Homer's  stories  are  the  useful  but  humble  and  nameless 
fountains  of  palace  and  cottage  and  wilderness.  Springs 
that  served  as  wells  or  drinking  places,  and  furnished  the 
water  for  washing,  and,  more  important  still,  in  the  days 
when  bathing  had  neither  begun  to  rank  with  holiness 
nor  to  be  considered  a  hygienic  necessity,  supplied  the 
beverage  for  the  daily  meals  and,  often,  wassail  for  enter- 
tainment and  the  formal  feast  before  wine  had  almost 
usurped  the  function  of  water  on  such  occasions. 


THE  ILIAD  AND  THE  ODYSSEY         553 

There  are  nearly  two  score  of  references  to  such 
Springs,  and  they  are  made  in  a  form  that,  while  varying 
slightly  in  the  wording  in  each  instance,  might  be  indi- 
cated in  a  general  way  by  the  following  three  couplets ; — 

A  golden  ewer  the  attendant  damsel  brings, 
Replete  with  water  from  the  crystal  Springs.  <' 

He  spoke,  and  bid  the  attendant  handmaid  bring 
The  purest  water  of  the  living  Spring.*' 

Grim  as  voracious  wolves,  that  seek  the  Springs 
When  scalding  thirst  their  burning  bowels  wrings.  <» 

The  possibility  is  suggested  in  No.  280  that  one  of  these 
numerous  unnamed  Springs  may  have  been  a  favorite  of 
Penelope's.  It  played  a  prominent  and  rollicking  part 
in  a  humorous  incident  that  occurred  while  the  feet  of 
Ulysses,  as  a  tramp,  were  being  washed  by  his  old  nurse 
Euryclea.  She,  during  this  bath,  penetrated  the  disguise 
of  enchantment  and  surprised  Penelope  with  the  news 
that  the  king  had  returned. 

The  remaining  Springs,  the  many  classic  fountains  that 
Homer  mentions,  are  far  from  Troy,  and,  having,  with  the 
exception  of  Arethusa,  no  connection  with  the  siege  or 
with  the  wanderings,  they  are  alluded  to  under  their  own 
names,  elsewhere  herein. 

4' Odyssey;  XV.  149. 
4»  Iliad;  XXIV.  388. 
«  Iliad;  XVI.  306. 


VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS 

412 
Virgil 

Virgil  seems  to  see  little  but  the  useful  side  of  Springs 
and,  when  not  under  the  kindly  influence  of  Theocritus, 
becomes  not  only  blind  to  their  beauties  but  even  un- 
mindful of  their  existence. 

In  the  final  book  of  the  JEneid  many  pages  are  devoted 
to  incidents  filled  with  the  personality  of  Juturna,  exactly 
as  his  predecessor  devoted  a  scene  to  Niobe  in  the  last 
book  of  the  Iliad.  Both  of  these  characters  became  Springs 
that  continue  today  to  be  objects  of  marked  interest;  but, 
while  Homer  in  his  passages  does  not  fail  to  paint  an 
affecting  picture  of  Niobe's  mountain  Fount, 

"Her  own  sad  monument  of  woe," 

Virgil  makes  not  the  slightest  reference  to  the  Spring  of 
Jutuma  which  he  might  have  seen  every  day  when  he 
lived  on  the  Esquiline  hill  at  Rome  where  it  was,  as  it 
continues  to  be,  one  of  the  most  attractive  relics  in  the 
Forum. 

This  slight  is  all  the  more  noticeable  because  of  Ju- 
tvirna's  prominence  in  the  beginnings  of  Rome,  she  having 
been,  according  to  some  assumers,  the  foster  aunt  of 
Romulus  the  progenitor  of  the  empire. 

In  Virgil's  version,  however,  the  Romans  owe  a  debt 
to  Fate  for  foiling  the  efforts  of  Juturna  in  Turnus'  fight* 

554 


VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS  555 

with  JEnesiS,  and  the  existence  of  Rome  lay  on  the  knees 
of  the  gods  while  this  valiant  and  active  ally  of  Juno 
flitted  about  the  field  of  the  contest;  it  was  "To  be,  or 
not  to  be,"  with  the  nebula  of  the  Empire  until  Juturna 
was  finally  foiled  and  ^neas  tritmiphed.  Had  she 
succeeded  in  her  desperate  efforts  to  save  her  brother, 
and  brought  about  the  Trojan's  death,  the  star  of  the 
Empire  would  not  have  been  formed ;  there  would  have 
been  no  Roman  history,  and  the  pages  and  volxunes  now 
filled  with  that  subject  would  have  contained  the  records 
of  another  nation,  with  a  catalogue  of  different  names 
and  with  accounts  of  acts  and  incidents  perhaps  un- 
dreamed of  by  makers  of  history  and  inventors  of  valor- 
ous deeds. 

*iEneid;  XII.  In.  467. 


413-414 

Bucolics.     Hylas 

Even  while  Virgil,  singing  his  Songs  of  Shepherds, 
wandered  through  the  Bucolics  in  the  footsteps  of 
Theocritus  he  hardly  gave  more  than  a  passing  glance  at 
the  fountains  that  his  Sicilian  leader  loved  to  linger  over 
with  fond  admiration  and  delightful  description;  thus  the 
Spring  of  Hylas  (which  bubbled  so  bountifully  that  it 
overflowed  line  after  line  while  Theocritus,  absorbed  in^ 
admiration,  described  its  most  minute  details,  naming  its 
ferns  and  flowers  and  noting  their  colors)  barely  dripped 
its  name  and  then  went  dry  as  Virgil  passed  it,  unob- 
servantly  and  roused  to  nothing  softer  than  ' '  the  sailors'  ^ 
cries  for  Hylas,  left  behind  them  at  the  fountain."  The 
stylus  of  the  Poet  of  Arms  was  unsuited  for  the  delicate 
delineations  the  Sicilian's  so  readily  traced,  and  the  other 


556  VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS 

half  dozen  mentions  of  Springs  in  the  Bucolics  might  be* 
given  in  full  in  the  same  number  of  lines; — 

0  Tityrus,  the  very  fountains  anxiously  called  for  you. 
Here  among  sacred  fountains  you  shall  enjoy  the  cool  shade. 

1  have  let  boars  loose  on  my  crystal  Springs. 

Strew  the  ground  with  leaves  ye  shepherds;  form  a  shade  over  the 

fountains. 
You  mossy  fountains,  and  grass  more  soft  than  sleep. 
Cover  with  verdant  shade  the  Springs. 
Here  are  cool  fountains;  here,  Lycoris,  soft  meads,  here  a  grove. 

Dancing  nymphs  and  mild-eyed  she-goats;  piping* 
shepherds  and  softly  lowing  calves,  attend  the  fountains 
of  Theocritus,  rather  than  the  roiling  boars  that  Virgil 
lets  loose  upon  his  crystal  Springs. 

And  where  Virgil  disfigures  his  fountains  with  leaves, 
Theocritus  shades  them  with  murmuring  pines  and 
sheltering  trees  twined  with  dark  ivy.  He  surrounds 
them  with  fragrant  vines  and  flowers,  and  hairy  humming 
bees,  and  sweet- voiced  birds;  he  brightens  them  with 
beds  of  silvery,  shining  pebbles,  and  sometimes  he  places 
a  milk-white  heifer's  skin  near  at  hand  to  make  a  couch's 
cover  for  the  indolent  and  drowsy.  He  even  starts  an 
epicure's  parotid  by  sybaritically  sweetening  one  of  his 
Springs  with  golden  honey,  so  that  the  least  thirsty 
skimmer,  not  heeding  the  lack  of  a  couple  of  long  oaten 
straws,  can  taste  the  confection  with  no  more  of  effort 
than  is  needed  to  look  at  the  lines.  Small  wonder  Theo- 
critus cared  as  little  for  simimer  heats  as  lovers  do  for 
parents'  words! 

*  Theocritus;  XIII.  39. 

3  Bucolics;  Eel.  VI.  43. 

4  Bucolics; — 

I.  42.  54-     II.  58.     V.  39.     VII.  43.     IX.  33.     X.  41. 
s  Theocritus;  Idylls; — 

I.  I.     III.  3.     VII.  136.     IX.  9.     XI.  46.     XXII.  35-     XXV.  31. 
Theocritus;  Epigrams;  IV. 


VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS  557 

415-418 
Georgics.     Castalia.     Peneus.     Clitumnus 

In  the  Georgics,  where  Virgil  announces  that  he  has 
unsealed  the  sacred  Springs  (of  poesy)  and  will  tread  an 
unused  track  about  Castalia,  whence  a  poet's  praises  of 
these  fascinating  features  of  Nature's  beauty  might  be 
looked  for  expectantly,  Springs  are  mainly  considered 
merely  as  factors  in  farming,  being  recommended  as  an^ 
ingredient  in  five  agricultural  recipes ;  as  a ; — 

requisite  for  the  feeding  ground  of  flocks; 
test  for  sourness  in  soils; 
means  of  fattening  horses ; 
ctu-e  for  insomnia  in  cattle; 

necessity  for  the   neighborhood   of   bee-hives   and 
violet  beds. 

Avemus  is  referred  to,  not  once  only  but  twice. 

And  then,  at  the  end  of  the  treatise,  a  part  of  the  story 
of  the  lover  of  Eurydice  is  introduced  and  opens  with 
Aristaeus  hastening  to  the  sacred  source  of  the  river 
Peneus.  But,  instead  of  being  treated  to  glimpses  of  a^ 
Thessalian  fountain  in  the  open  air,  Aristaeus  and  the 
expectant  reader  are  wearily  wafted  to  a  far  distant  place, 
where,  in  a  dark,  distressingly  noisy,  humid,  subaqueous 
cavern,  they  are  expected  to  see  the  source,  not  only  of 
Peneus,  but,  of  all  the  rivers  gliding  under  the  great 
earth.  A  little  more  gloom,  and  a  few  more  discomforts 
added  to  this  uncanny  cavern,  and  it  might  have  vied  in 
fearsome  features  with  awesome  Avernus  itself  in  the 
heyday  of  its  horrors. 

Clitumnus,  Virgil  mentions  but  once,  and  then  only  in^ 
connection  with  the  color  of  the  cattle  that  pasture  by  its 
waters;  yet,  because  of  its  remarkable  size  and  clarity,  it 


558  VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS 

has  always  been  such  a  fascinating  feature  of  Um- 
brian  scenery  that  noted  and  busy  people  have  made 
long  journeys  to  see  it;  and  Pliny,  who  left  a  lengthy 
eulogism  of  this  Spring,  was  so  enchanted  with  it  that 
he  earnestly  advised  his  friends  not  to  fail  to  pay  it  a 
visit. 

'  Georgics; — 

II.  199.  247.     in.  13$.  533.     IV.  iS. 
'  Georgics;  IV.  318. 
•Georgics;  II.  146. 


419-424 

The  iENEiD.     Arethusa.     Timavus.     Eridanus. 
NuMicus.     Silvia's  Fawn  Spring 

For  the  entire  story  of  the  JEneid,  Virgil  required  but 
two  Springs;  one  a  fictitious  fountain  in  Libya;  and  the 
other,  a  real  feature,  Avernus,  in  Italy,  with  which  he 
connects  the  source  of  the  Cocytus  River.  Incidentally 
he  names  the  Springs  of  Arethusa,  Timavus,  Eridanus, 
Numicus,  and  an  unlocated  and  undescribed  Spring  in 
which  Silvia  bathes  a  tame  stag. 

Virgil  describes  the  Eridanus  as  rising  in  Elysium,  the 
realms  of  joy,  on  the  charming  lawns  of  which  were  the 
mansions  of  the  Blest,  who  dwelt  in  the  ultra  violet  ray,  or 
at  least  in  a  buoyant  atmosphere  of  purple  light,  with  a 
private  sun  and  stars  of  their  own. 

In  this  delightful  realm  Eridanus  appeared,  in  a  fra- 
grant grove  of  laurel  from  which,  on  upper  earth,  it  welled 
forth  in  mighty  volume  through  the  wood. 

Under  the  river  Po,  which  is  the  offspring  of  this  foun- 
tain, further  mention  is  made  of  Eridanus  in  the  light  of 
modern  description. 

When  it  is  added  that  iEneas  swears  one  oath  by  foun-' 


VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS  559 

tains  in  general,  a  full  concordance  of  the  Springs  of  the 
^neid  is  completed, 

tiGneid;  XII.  179- 


4^5 
The  Libyan  Spring 

Virgil,  unlike  Homer,  was  not  a  creator  of  Springs,  and 
this  manufactured  fountain,  the  first  to  appear  in  the 
epic,  is  found  without  surprise  to  be  little  more  than  a 
■diminutive,  cold,  cheerless  and  colorless  copy  of  Homer's 
cave  Spring  of  Phorcys  in  the  island  of  Ithaca. 

JEneas  with  seven  ships,  instead  of  the  nine  that 
TJlysses  last  commanded,  arrived  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Carthage  where  he  was  to  meet  with  the  Dido  of  a  single 
charm,  instead  of  with  a  versatile  enchantress  such  as 
Homer  gave  to  Ulysses  in  Calypso;  and,  in  searching  for 
an  anchorage,  .^neas  finds  "a  place  of  shelter  in  a  deep 
retiring  bay  where  an  island  forms  a  harbor  by  its  pro- 
jecting sides,  against  which  every  wave  from  the  ocean 
is  broken  up.  On  either  side  there  rise  huge  rocks  over- 
hung with  a  dark  grove,  and,  beneath  the  brow  of  the 
cliffs  and  facing  the  bay,  theie  is  a  grotto  of  pendant 
rocks  within  which  there  is  a  Spring  of  sweet  water  and'** 
seats  of  natural  stone — the  home  of  the  nymphs." 

'•jEneid;  I.  169. 


426-427 
AVERNUS.     COCYTUS    MiRE  SPRING 

The  second  of  the  only  two  Springs  connected  with  the 
story  of  the  .^neid  is  this  real  one  of  Avemus. 

Although  Virgil  resided  for  a  time  at  Rome,  looking 


560  VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS 

very  likely  for  local  color  for  some  of  the  scenes  of  the 
^neid,  he  wrote  the  epic  in  the  neighborhood  of  Naples, 
among  environments  that  might  have  been  readily  de- 
duced had  mention  of  them  been  lacking  in  the  history 
of  the  Poet-Magician's  life;  for  the  one  Spring  that 
appears  to  have  made  more  than  a  passing  impression 
upon  Virgil  is  the  Spring,  or,  rather,  federation  of  foun- 
tains that  forms  the  little  lake  Avernus  which  nestles  in 
the  hills  a  few  miles  from  the  city  of  Naples,  and  nearer 
still  to  the  place  where  the  epic  was  penned. 

And  just  as  one  seems  to  see  the  persistence  of  the 
pleasing  image  of  the  cavern  Spring  of  Homer's  study 
den  in  Smyrna  in  all  of  his  fontal  fancies,  so  one  finds 
Avernus  recurring  in  Virgil  again  and  again  in  place  of  the 
more  cheerful  f ontlets  that  gush  so  beguilingly  in  Homer's 
pictuie  poetry. 

Avernus  has  been  a  lake  from  the  infancy  of  Fable,  and 
its  associations  with  dread  and  the  terrors  of  the  lower 
regions  seem  therefore  somewhat  unreasonable.  But 
Science,  with  a  thousand  eyes  seeing  farther  back  than 
Fable  could  remember,  descries  in  the  basin  of  the  lake 
the  crater  of  a  violent  volcano  that  may  have  made,  in 
prememorial  ages,  as  many  night-like  days  and  spread  as 
many  fiery  horrors  as  Vesuvius,  twenty  miles  away  has 
often  done  in  History's  time.  Inference  then,  relying  on 
Science's  sight,  easily  accounts  for  early  beliefs  in  the 
marvelous  beings,  the  Cimmerians — the  People  of  Night 
— who  lived  near  the  portals  of  Homer's  hell  and  were 
transferred  to  Avernus  without  any  satisfactory  warrant; 
and  for  Hecate's  undesirable  residence  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Avernus. 

It  might,  however,  be  added  that  a  local  historian, 
Ephorus,  writing  about  408  B.C.,  says  that  the  name  was 
given  to  the  servants  of  an  oracle  near  Avernus,  because 


VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS  561 

they  were  not  permitted  to  see  the  sun;  they  were  obhged 
to  remain  underground  during  the  day  and  went  abroad 
only  at  night. 

But  before  the  time  of  Agrippa,  about  the  year  37  of 
Christian  chronology,  the  vicinage  had  been  deserted  by 
one  terror  after  another  until  it  had  become  merely  a 
densely  wooded  and  darksome  place,  and  it  ceased  to  be 
even  that  when  the  forests  had  been  thinned  by  Agiippa, 
who  also  cut  a  channel  from  the  sea  and  made  the  lake  a 
naval  basin. 

The  lake  is  a  symmetrical,  circular  body  of  water  about 
half  a  mile  across  and  with  a  maximum  depth  of  a  few 
feet  more  than  two  hundred.  It  is  kerbed  with  a  solid 
stone  wall  and  provided  with  a  little  two  foot  wide  stone 
canal  through  which  the  overflow  runs  in  a  swift  moving 
current  of  four  inches'  depth  down  to  the  sea  on  a  three 
and  a  half  foot  lower  level. 

Towards  the  sea,  on  the  side  where  the  outlet  is,  about 
one  sixth  of  the  circumference  of  the  crater  is  missing 
clear  down  to  the  level  of  the  lake,  giving  an  outHne  not 
unlike  that  of  the  partly  pillaged  Colosseum  at  Rome. 
The  remainder  of  the  cone,  some  two  hundred  feet  high, 
is  terraced  and  cultivated,  and  a  half  dozen  houses  and  a 
castle-like  ruin  cling  around  this  ancient  throat  of  hell,  as 
though  Pluto  had  suddenly  paused  while  devouring  a 
partly  chewed  settlement. 

Modern  birds  fly  over  the  lake  with  impunity,  and  fish 
swim  in  its  waters ;  but  for  some  reason  the  natives  do  not 
drink  the  water  of  the  lake,  and  the  fish  that  they  catch 
in  it  are  kept,  for  a  time  before  they  are  eaten,  in  the 
Lucrine  Lake  that  made  the  oyster  famous,  and  which  is 
within  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  Avemus,  and  a  half  mile 
from  the  sea. 

Today  one  might  search  long  and  far  before  finding  a 
36 


562  VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS 

water  source  with  surroundings  less  suggestive  of  hell 
than  anything  now  connected  with  this  smooth,  silent, 
symmetrical,  peaceful,  and  partially  sedge-surfaced 
Spring,  that  is  bordered  with  wildiiowers  and  gay  with 
their  colors  in  the  months  of  the  year  when  Springs,  that 
are  nourished  in  cradles  less  likely  to  rock  out  or  burn 
up  their  contents,  are  smothered  with  snows. 

The  fumes  of  former  times  have  lost  their  vigor  and 
volume,  and  a  small  collection  of  meager  jets  of  slightly 
sulfuretted  steam,  escaping  through  the  ground  a  few 
miles  away,  are  all  that  remain  to  remind  one  of  the 
supposedly  dense  mass  of  noxious  vapor  that  once 
poisoned  the  overhanging  air  and,  by  making  its  neighbor- 
hood birdless,  gave  the  lake  its  name. 

Nowadays  a  bad  smell  or  an  injurious  gas  is  such  a 
rarity  in  this  neighborhood  that  the  few  remaining^ 
sulphur  Springs,  and  one  exit  of  carbonic  acid  gas,  are 
carefully  kept  out  of  sight  under  lock  and  key,  and  are 
only  exhibited  as  curiosities  for  a  quid  pro  quo ;  and  so  the 
jets  of  steam  that  now  rise  in  a  circumscribed  space  called 
the  Solfatara,  a  crater  some  two  miles  straight  away  from 
the  lake,  are  cherished  as  carefully  as  the  last  living  speci- 
mens of  a  perishing  species  of  animal  life.  They  are  well 
guarded  and  tariffed,  these  pretty,  white  spirals  from  the; 
fumaroles  of  the  Solfatara,  but  with  a  small  silver  root, 
instead  of  the  golden  branch  required  of  ^Eneas,  one  may 
wind  about  and  wander  among  them  without  danger  or 
discomfort. 

Besides  these  features,  these  little  innocent  and  tenu- 
ous whisps  of  steam,  some  extinct  volcanic  cones  on 
Ischia  and  the  near-by  islands,  and  the  hill  of  Monte 
Nuova  that  the  forces  below  have,  within  five  hundred 
years,  pushed  upward  through  the  crust  of  the  ground, 
there  is  scarcely  aught  to  help  to  visualize  the  subter- 


VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS  563 

ranean  commotions  in  this  locality  in  past  ages — the 
traditions  of  which  commotions  perhaps  gave  Virgil,  St. 
John,  and  Dante  and  others  inspiration  for  the  portrayal 
of  far  distantly  located  disturbances — and  they  might 
now  be  forgotten  but  for  the  Apocalypses  and  the  Poems, 
and  the  stories  connecting  those  compositions  with  the 
ebullitions  of  the  earth  around  Avernus. 

While  Virgil  uses  the  same  names  that  Homer  did  in  his 
geography  of  the  Infernal  Regions,  he  does  not  follow  him 
in  locating  the  entrance  to  the  Nether  World;  it  being 
evident  from  the  course  of  Ulysses'  vessel  that  he  landed 
at  an  entrance  very  far  from  this  Avemus — Ulysses 
himself  never  knew  where  it  was,  for  when  he  tried  to 
find  out  he  was  told,  by  the  power  he  questioned,  that  it 
was  not  necessary  for  him  to  know,  as  the  ship  would  sail 
there  of  its  own  accord. 

Virgil,  possibly  to  avoid  the  somewhat  ridiculous  im- 
pression of  a  soused  and  dripping  hero,  constructed  a 
cave,  on  the  shore  of  Avemus,  for  .Eneas'  entrance;  this" 
cave  was  near  the  Cvunaean  Rock,  over  which,  and  the 
Lake  and  its  groves,  Hecate  had  appointed  a  Sibyl  to 
preside  as  her  priestess. 

This  Sibyl  having  told  .^neas  that  the  way  to  Avemus 
was  easy  if  he  first  procured  a  certain  golden  branch 
from  one  of  the  myriad  trees  in  the  grove,  he  secured  it 
through  the  guidance  of  two  pigeons,  though  more  appro- 
priate pilots  might  possibly  have  been  provided  for  those 
birdless  precincts ;  they  flew  slowly  before  him  to  the  edge 
of  the  lake  and  alighted  on  a  shady  holm  above  the  only 
bright  spot  in  all  the  gloomy  woods,  the  needed  golden 
branch  which  tinkled  in  a  gentle  breeze  and  kindly  gave  a 
guiding  sound.  Armed  with  this  branch,  ^Eneas  passed 
into  the  deep  and  hideous  cave  whose  yawning  mouth 
was  set  upon  Avemus'  shingly  shore  and  whose  tunnel- 


564  VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS 

like  path  led  to  the  Tartarian  Lake,  Acheron,  of  which 
Avernus  was  an  overflow.  At  the  side  of  this  path  a 
horrid  Spring,  a  seething  eddy,  turbid  and  impure,  boiled^* 
up  with  mire  in  a  vast  abyss  and  supplied  the  river 
Cocytus  over  which,  on  seeing  the  golden  branch,  Charon 
ferried  the  bearer  with  pole  and  sail,  in  a  boat  that,  accus- 
tomed only  to  cargoes  of  impalpable  shades,  promptly 
sprang  a  leak  when  it  felt  the  husky  hero's  weight.  Land- 
ing on  the  other  side  of  the  river  Cocjrtus,  ^Eneas  mounted 
the  bank  guarded  by  Cerberus  and  reached  the  region 
that  is  imprisoned  by  the  river  Styx  in  a  nine-fold  circling 
stream,  and  continued  to  where  the  road  forked — to 
Tartarus  on  the  left,  and  to  Elysium  on  the  right. 

To  the  left  of  this  road,  under  a  rock,  ran  Phlegethon,  a 
river  of  flaming  torrents  and  roaring  rocks,  which  sur- 
rounded the  court  of  Rhadamanthus,  one  of  the  three 
judges  of  hell. 

Further  along  .^neas  came  to  a  winding  vale  and  a 
lonely  grove,  and  the  River  of  Forgetfulness,  Lethe,  which 
skirts  the  spacious,  airy  plains  of  Elysium.  After  a 
thousand  years'  purgation  the  spirits  there  drank  from 
this  river,  forgot  the  past,  and  returned  again  to  mortal 
bodies  on  the  earth. 

The  exit  from  this  peculiar  and  impossible  territory, 
where  rivers  ran  uphill  and  boats  sailed  over  mud,  was 
through  two  gates,  one  of  horn  for  true  dreams,  and  one 
of  transparent  ivory  for  false  dreams. 

Quite  appropriately,  ^^neas  left  by  the  gate  of  false 
visions  and,  very  surprisingly,  soon  found  himself  again 
in  the  vicinity  of  Avernus. 

To  this  remarkable  underground  region,  Virgil  pro- 
vided another  entrance,  somewhat  in  the  nature  of  a 
private  way  for  the  immediate  members  of  Pluto's  family, 
which  he  describes  as  an  awful  cavern  with  pestilential 


VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS  565 

jaws  and  a  vast  whirlpool  receiving  its  water,  like  Aver- 
nus,  from  Acheron's  overflow,  and  located  where  a  roar- 
ing noise  is  heard  in  a  densely  dark  part  of  the  valley  of 
Ampsanctus. 

Now,  in  the  XXth  century,  the  only  feature  near 
Avemus  that  is  openly  suggestive  of  hell  has  been  made 
by  man !  It  is  a  factory  for  the  production  of  Armstrong 
artillery,  intended  to  injure  the  bodies  and  shorten  the 
lives  of  men,  and  it  spreads  over  an  extensive  area  of  the 
shore  where  formerly,  in  the  meadows  salted  by  the  mild 
Mediterranean,  flocks  of  peaceful  sheep  were  wont  to 
gambol  and  graze,  and  to  grow  gigots  to  pleasure  the 
palates  and  prolong  the  lives  of  humanity. 

Today  no  prettier  spots  could  be  picked  out  to  live  in 
than  those  to  be  seen  from  the  lip  of  Avernus'  slightly 
marred  vase,  before  which  extends  a  curving  coast  form- 
ing, as  Florus  said,  delightful  places  of  retirement,  even'* 
for  the  sea,  and  beautiful  views  of  enchanting  islands; 
islands  laden  with  legend  and  linked  forever  with  the 
classics  of  virgin  literature;  carvings,  of  the  sea  and  the 
storm,  that  are  lovely  either  when  the  atmospherical 
microscope  of  a  motel  ess  day  shows  their  shapes  with  the 
sharpness  of  a  silhouette,  or  when  their  rosy  hues  are 
softly  powdered  by  impalpable  puffs  from  Vesuvius  and 
they  appear  in  their  haze  like  fancy  figured  clouds  float- 
ing upon  the  sea,  rather  than  solid  bulks  arising  from  its 
depths. 

Perhaps  because  of  these  beauties,  as  well  as  the  place's 
proximity  to  Avernus,  Virgil  located  his  Neapolitan  villa 
at  the  foot  of  Posilipo,  a  height  on  the  coast  that  over- 
looks every  feature  of  the  land  and  sea  for  many  miles 
around,  and  his  last  wish  was  that  he  might  be  laid  to  rest 
on  this  hill. 

He  is  said  to  have  been  in  Greece  in  the  year  19  B.C., 


566  VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS 

the  year  of  his  death  at  the  age  of  52,  and  it  is  pleasant 
to  believe,  though  some  have  had  the  heart  to  doubt  it, 
that  his  last  wish  was  lovingly  fulfilled.  But  no  one  covild 
have  selected  a  more  dismal  part  of  the  prominence  of 
Posilipo  than  was  chosen  by  those  who  located  the  Poet's 
tomb,  which  is  in  an  interior  depression  of  the  tufa  hill, 
and  has  to  be  reached  through  a  tunnel  from  the  outside, 
or  by  interminable  steps  through  a  vineyard  on  the  inside, 
and  from  which  absolutely  nothing  can  be  seen  that 
might  interest  even  the  most  easily  pleased  spirit  with  a 
bent  for  scenic  beauties;  and  the  view  of  Avemus  that 
Virgil  perhaps  wanted  his  spirit  to  have  always  in  sight, 
as  indeed  it  might  have  had  it,  had  the  top  of  the  hill  been 
adorned  with  the  structure,  is  quite  invisible  from  the 
tomb,  which  is  placed  half  a  hundred  yards  below  the 
pinnacle  of  Posilipo. 

Strangely  enough,  and  suggestive  either  of  retribution 
or  of  the  irony  of  Fate,  it  has  come  to  pass  that  this  poet, 
who  treated  Springs  with  little  better  than  contempt,  is 
lying  through  the  sleep  of  eternity  in  a  structure  that  has 
been  described  as  resembling  more  than  anything  else^^ 
the  house  of  a  western-farm  Spring ! 

"  ^neid;  VI.  43.  126  et  seq.;  VI.  237. 

"iEneid;  VI.  296. 

'3  Florus;  Roman  Hist.  I.  16. 

'4  E.  R.  Pennell;  "Italy  of  Virgil  and  Horace." 


428 

Lethe 

The  source  of  Lethe,  the  River  of  Forgetfulness,  that 
Virgil  says  ^neas  found  skirting  the  Plains  of  Elysiimi, 
was  completely  ignored  by  the  poet,  although  its  water 
contained  man's  only  hope  of  resurrection. 


VIRGIL'S  SPRINGS  567 

Fortunately  Ovid,  one  of  Virgil's  friends,  gave  the 
world  a  full  description  of  this  most  important  of  all 
Springs,  and  his  account  of  it  is  summarised  in  No.  396. 

Lethe  was  also  a  name  given  to  one  of  the  Springs  of 
the  Cave  of  Trophonius  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Hercyna 
which  flows  in  Boeotia. 

Virgil;  JEaeid;  VI.  In  703. 


ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 
LATIUM 

429 
The  Springs  of  Rome 

A  number  of  the  Springs  of  ancient  Rome  are  still 
living  and  sparkling  in  Latin  literature,  and  doubtless 
there  were  many  others,  that  were  praised  in  poetry  and 
prose,  v/hose  eulogies  are  either  irrevocably  lost  or  have 
not  yet  been  discovered;  Springs  that  issued  from  the 
Seven  Hills  and  made  the  neighborhood  a  place  of  "mur- 
muring streams, "  and  much  of  the  site  of  the  present  city 
marsh  land  and  meadow.  Even  among  the  names  of  the 
streets  there  is  testimony  that  the  charioteer,  in  later 
times,  rolled  over  the  course  of  a  highway  that  in  the 
beginning  had  only  borne  boats. 

To  those  times  the  poets,  and  even  more  serious  com- 
posers, never  tired  of  referring,  and  numbers  of  these 
little  sketches  of  the  bucolic  beginnings  of  the  great  city 
may  be  found  tucked  away  here  and  there  among  the 
pages  of  Rome's  most  famous  writers. 

"All  the  present  extent  that  you  see  of  mighty  Rome 
was,  before  the  time  of  Phrygian  ^^neas,  a  grassy  mound; 
and  where  the  Palatine,  hallowed  by  the  temple  of  naval 
Phoebus,  now  stands,  the  cows  of  Evander  strayed  and 
fed,  and  the  Tiber  met  on  its  way  our  oxen  only." 

"This  crowded  neighborhood  pleases  me.    The  Tiber 

568 


LATIUM  509 

once  flowed  this  way,  and  they  say  that  the  sound  of  oars 
was  heard  on  the  waters." 

"The  Velabra  were  once  overspread  by  their  own 
marshy  stream,  and  the  boatmen  sailed  over  waters  that 
have  given  place  to  what  is  now  part  of  the  city." 

"Here,  where  Rome  now  is,  a  forest  untouched  by  the 
axe  used  to  flourish,  and  this  state  so  mighty  was  a  place 
of  pasturage  for  a  few  oxen." 

* '  Here,  where  now  the  city  stands,  was  then  but  the 
city's  site." 

"  Here,  where  the  market  places  now  are,  you  might  see 
boats  wandering  about — where  too  thy  valley  now  lies,  O 
Circus  Maximus." 

"Here,  where  now  is  Rome,  the  capital  of  the  world, 
there  were  then  but  trees  and  grass  and  a  few  sheep,  and  a 
cottage  here  and  there." 

"This  place  where  now  are  the  markets,  formerly 
fenny  marshes  covered;  and  a  ditch  was  here  swimming 
with  water  from  the  overflowing  of  the  river.  That  spot 
formed  the  Curtain  Lake  which  now  supports  the  altars 
on  dry  ground.  In  the  spot  where  the  Velabra  are  now 
wont  to  lead  the  processions  into  the  Circus,  nought  was 
there  then  but  willows  and  dense  reeds." 

The  laying  out  of  streets  cuts  the  arteries  of  the  Springs 
and  destroys  them,  so  that  it  would  be  idle  now  even  to 
speculate  on  the  exact  location  of  many  of  the  old-time 
Springs  of  Rome;  those  that  are  mentioned  in  the  follow- 
ing pages,  however,  were  probably  all  but  one  within  a 
mile  of  the  Capitoline  Mount,  the  smallest  but  most 
famous  of  the  city's  celebrated  Seven  Hills,  and  under 
whose  shadow  Romulus  tossed  the  first  clod  from  which 
the  city  sprang. 

In  those  days,  and  indeed  during  441  years  after  the 
founding  of  the  city  on  the  21st  of  April,  753  B.C.,  the 


570  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

Springs  of  Rome  and  the  water  of  the  River  Tiber  sufficed, 
and  were  the  sole  sources  of  supply,  for  the  needs  of  its 
citizens. 

Appius  Claudius  Caecus  who,  in  313  B.C.,  made  and  gave 
his  name  to  the  Appian  Way,  built  the  first  aqueduct 
which  brought  in  outside  water,  called  Aqua  Appia;  it 
was  1 1  miles  long  and  partly  subterranean,  and  ran  from 
the  direction  of  Praeneste. 

The  River  Anio's  water,  taken  near  Tivoli,  was  next 
drawn  upon  thirty  years  later;  and  when  Marcus  Agrippa 
had  piped  in  the  Aqua  Virgo  for  the  purpose  of  supplying 
his  baths,  the  craze  for  aqueduct  construction  and  con- 
tracts was  no  doubt  well  on  the  way  to  the  stage  that 
Juvenal  noted  as  a  settled  mania,  making  monied  men  as 
rapidly  as  the  water-  and  site-purchasing  schemes  of  the 
most  proficient  politicians  of  the  get-rich-quickly  age,  in 
which  one  aqueduct  is  hardly  begun  before  pipes  are  laid 
for  another  and  a  longer  one,  that  shall  draw  from  the 
public  treasury  a  more  solid  stream  than  was  ever  fur- 
nished by  the  waters  of  any  Spring  ever  tapped  in  the 
far  away  hills. 

In  fact  it  was  only  a  few  generations  later  that  Pliny 
wrote; — Preceding  aqueducts  have  all  been  surpassed 
by  the  costly  work  recently  commenced  by  Caligula,  and 
completed  by  Claudius.  Under  these  princes,  the  Curtian 
and  Caerulean  Waters,  with  the  New  Anio,  were  brought 
from  a  distance  of  forty  miles,  and  at  so  high  a  level  that  all 
the  hills  on  which  the  city  is  built  were  supplied  with  water. 

The  sum  expended  on  these  works  was  three  hundred 
and  fifty  millions  of  sesterces,  which,  as  they  were  con- 
structed with  slaves  for  laborers  was  the  equivalent  in 
purchasing  power  of  probably  considerably  more  than  the 
fourteen  million  dollars  the  same  weight  of  gold  would 
represent  in  modern  money. 


LATIUM  571 

Nineteen  aqueducts  are  said  to  have  been  built  in  all,  of 
which  eleven  have  been  located; — 


Appia 

of  312  B.C. 

Virgo 

of  33  B.C. 

Anio  Vetus 

272 

Alsietina 

"29    " 

Marcia 

"      T   A   A           •' 
144 

Claudia 

"  38  A.D, 

Tepula 

"      127          " 

Novus 

"38     " 

Julia 

"    33    " 

These  nine  supplied  Rome  with  more  than  332  million 
gallons  of  water  daily.  Eventually,  the  Marcia,  Tepula 
and  Julia  conduits  were  placed  above  each  other  in  that 
order ;  and  the  Novus  was  placed  over  Claudia. 

Later,  two  more  were  built; — 

Trajana  ofiioA.D.      Alexandrina    of  226  a.d. 

Besides  the  arches  of  the  aqueducts  that  are  still  in  use, 
long  stretches  of  others  that  have  survived  time,  war  and 
earthquake,  stand  in  picturesque  and  graceful  lines  upon 
the  Campagna,  like  regiments  of  massive  sentinels  mount- 
ing vigilant  and  ceaseless  guard  beyond  the  city  walls. 

The  Spring  of  Pitonia  (No.  461)  was  the  principal 
source  of  the  Aqua  Marcia,  though  the  waters  of  the 
latter  were  increased  by  those  of  a  Spring  that  were 
brought  to  it  through  the  Aqua  Augusta. 

The  Aqua  Virgo,  in  addition  to  the  flow  from  the 
Spring  of  the  Virgin  (No.  440)  received  supplies  from 
several  Springs  that  it  encountered  during  its  course 
underground. 

The  Aqua  Claudia's  water,  as  said  by  Pliny,  was  taken 
from  two  excellent  and  bountiful  Springs,  the  Csenilus 
and  the  Curtius  near  the  38th  milestone  on  the  Via  Sub- 
lacensis;  later,  it  drew  from  a  third  Spring  called  the 


572  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

Albudinus;  and  many  of  its  ruined  arches  still  curve 
across  the  Campagna. 

The  Aqua  Crabra  was  supplied  from  a  source  near  Tus- 
culum,  fifteen  miles  from  Rome;  it  was  strangely  subject 
to  changes  from  good  to  bad,  apparently  at  the  bidding  of 
the  wealthy  villa  owners  at  Tusculum,  being  under  one 
administration  too  bad  for  Rome  and  therefore  diverted 
to  Tusculum,  where  it  was  good  enough  for  such  people 
as  the  epicure  Lucullus;  and  Cicero,  who  seems  to  have 
taken  a  large  share  of  it  for  his  $25,000  villa,  as  he  was 
made  to  pay  an  "acknowledgment"  for  its  use.  After 
that,  it  became  good  enough  for  Rome  to  which  its  water 
was  again  diverted. 

The  Aqua  Felice's  water  is  understood  to  have  come 
from  a  Spring  called  Alexandrina. 

The  other  aqueducts  which  did  not  start  from  Springs 
drew  their  supplies  from  rivers,  lakes,  and  similar  sources. 

Supplementing  the  aqueducts,  either  as  useful  or  as 
adorning  features,  there  were  700  wells;  500  fountains;  130 
reservoirs ;  300  statues  of  marble  or  bronze,  and  400  marble 
columns;  and  at  one  time  there  were  856  public  baths. 

Propertius;  V.  Elegies  i,  2  &  9. 
Ovid.  Fasti; — 

I:  In  242.     II:  In  280  &  391.     VI:  In  40s. 
Pliny;  XXXVI.  24. 


Bona  Dea 

The  waters  of  this  Spring  had  long  been  in  sanctified 
use  in  the  days  of  Hercules,  who  came  upon  it  as  he  was 
returning  from  Gades,  in  completion  of  his  tenth  labor, 
with  the  human-flesh-eating  oxen  of  Geryon. 

Many  beings  have  been  suggested  by  different  scholars 
as  the  original  Bona  Dea,  even  including  an  old  woman 


LATIUM  573 

whose  husband  beat  her  to  death  for  drunkenness.  Her 
Spring  seems  to  have  been  on  the  Palatine  Hill,  possibly 
on  the  Aventine  Hill  which  adjoins  it,  but,  at  any  rate, 
near  the  Forum  Boarum,  which  Hercules  so  named 
because  his  charges  for  a  time  there  pastured. 

Cacus,  a  desperate  three-headed  and  resourceful  robber, 
who  lived  in  a  fearful  cave  near-by,  managed  unobserved 
to  get  the  oxen  into  his  hiding  place,  using  the  crafty 
expedient  of  pulling  them  in  backwards  by  their  tails, 
so  that  the  direction  of  their  tracks  would  not  betray  him. 
The  subsequent  lowing  of  the  animals,  however,  apprized 
the  hero  of  their  whereabouts,  and  he  killed  the  robber 
and  rescued  them. 

The  contest  was  protracted  and  strenuous,  and  at  the 
end,  the  victor's  mouth  and  parched  palate  were  racked 
with  thirst,  and  no  teeming  earth  suppHed  him  with 
water.  "Suddenly  he  hears  some  girls  laughing  in  retire- 
ment, at  a  distance,  where  a  grove  had  grown  into  a 
forest  with  shady  circuit,  containing  the  secret  shrine  of 
Bona  Dea,  and  the  Springs  used  in  sacrifices  and  the  rites 
profaned  with  impunity  by  none. 

"Purple  fillets  covered  the  retired  abodes;  the  time- 
worn  shrine  glowed  with  burning  incense;  the  poplar,  too, 
ornamented  the  temple  with  its  masses  of  foliage,  and 
many  a  shady  bower  sheltered  birds  as  they  sang. 

"  Hither  rushed  Hercules  and  sweeping  the  ground  with 
his  beard,  dry  and  matted  with  dust,  he  poiu-ed  forth, 
before  the  door,  words  beneath  the  language  of  a  god; 
'  To  you  I  pray,  O  ye  that  are  sporting  in  a  sacred  grotto 
in  the  grove,  open  your  shrine,  in  hospitality,  to  weary 
travelers.  I  am  wandering  in  want  of  water,  and  that, 
too,  about  a  country  of  murmuring  streams,  and  as  much 
water  as  I  can  hold  in  the  hollow  of  my  hand  is  enough.' 

" '  Have  ye  heard  of  one  who  has  borne  the  world  on  his 


574  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

back  ?  I  am  he :  the  rescued  earth  calls  me  Alcides.  Who 
has  not  heard  of  the  bold  deeds  of  the  club  of  Hercules, 
and  of  his  arrows  powerless  against  no  beast  that  is  born, 
and  of  the  Stygian  darkness  opened  to  him,  only,  of 
men?' 

'"Receive  me;  at  last  this  land  is  open  before  me, 
weary  one  that  I  am.' 

" '  Though  ye  were  offering  a  sacrifice  to  Juno,  my  bitter 
enemy,  even  she,  stepmother  though  she  is,  would  not 
have  shut  up  her  water  from  me.  But  if  any  one  of  you  is 
frightened  by  my  looks,  or  my  lion's  skin,  and  my  hair 
scorched  in  Libya's  sun,  I  am  the  same  one  that  per- 
formed servile  offices  in  a  purple  robe,  and  spun  my  daily 
task  with  the  Lydian  distaff;  my  hairy  breast  has  been 
confined  in  a  soft  girdle,  and  though  my  hands  are  hard, 
I  made  a  handy  girl. ' 

' '  And  the  venerable  Priestess  answered  him  as  follows, 
having  her  gray  hair  bound  with  a  purple  fillet :  '  Gaze  no 
longer,  Stranger,  and  withdraw  from  the  hallowed  grove : 
quickly  begone  and  fly  from  our  threshold  whilst  thou 
canst  leave  it  in  safety !  The  altar  that  protects  itself  in  a 
retired  shrine  is  forbidden  to  men,  and  profanation  of  it  is 
punished  by  a  fearful  penalty.  At  a  great  price  did  the 
Priest  Tiresias  gaze  on  Pallas,  while  she  laved  her  stal- 
wart limbs,  having  laid  aside  the  Gorgon  shield.  May  the 
gods  send  thee  other  fountains;  the  Spring  that  flows 
here,  out  of  the  way,  and  with  secret  approach,  is  peculiar 
to  maidens!' 

"Thus  said  the  old  woman:  he  pushed  with  his  shoulder 
the  door  that  hid  the  fountain  from  his  view,  and  the 
closed  door  was  not  proof  against  his  assault,  angry  and 
thirsty  as  he  was. 

"But  after  he  had  fairly  drained  the  stream  and 
quenched  his  thirst,  he  laid  down  severe  laws  before 


LATIUM  575 

drying  his  lips;  'This  corner  of  the  world,'  said  he,  're- 
ceives me,  in  the  course  of  fulfilling  my  destiny ;  at  length 
this  land  is  open  to  me,  weary  as  I  am.  May  this  great 
altar,  dedicated  by  me  on  the  recovery  of  my  flocks,  made 
great  by  my  own  hands,  never  be  opened  to  the  worship 
of  women,  that  the  thirst  of  the  great  Hercules  be  not 
unrevenged. '" 

The  altar  referred  to  is  the  Ara  Maxima.     (See  No. 
252.) 

Propertius;  V.  Elegy  9. 


Tarpeia 

The  fountain  of  Tarpeia  is  the  first  that  appears  in  the 
mythical  history  of  Rome,  and  dates  back  to  the  times 
when  the  Sabines,  still  seeking  redress  for  the  loss  of  their 
stolen  daughters,  attacked  the  little  Roman  stronghold 
and  secured  admittance  through  the  disloyalty  of  the 
impressionable  Vestal  Tarpeia,  whose  father,  Tarpeius, 
commanded  the  fort  and  lived  on  the  Tarpeian  Rock, 
a  part  of  what  was  afterwards  called  the  Capitoline 
Hill. 

Propertius  has  thrown  another  and  a  softening  light 
upon  the  character  of  the  Commander's  daughter,  under 
which  she  would  seem  to  have  been  carried  away  by  the 
attraction  of  her  heart  and  not  by  a  sordid  love  for 
jewelry  and  soldiers'  bracelets. 

According  to  this  version,  Tarpeia  fell  in  love  with 
Eling  Tatius,  of  the  invading  army,  whom  she  saw  for  the 
first  time  while  she  was  getting  water  at  this  Spring,  and 
it  was  in  piirchase  of  his  promise  to  marry  her  that  she 
betrayed  her  city  and  opened  the  gate  to  its  foes. 


576  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

Propertius  says; — "The  Tarpeian  Grove  was  enclosed 
within  an  ivy  clad  ravine,  with  many  a  tree  rustling  in 
concert  with  the  plash  of  native  waters,  the  shady  abode 
of  Sylvanus,  whither  the  sweet  pipe  called  the  sheep  out 
of  the  glare  to  drink. 

' '  This  fountain  Tatius  bordered  with  a  fence  of  maple, 
and  placed  his  trusty  camp  on  the  crest  of  the  elevation, 
and  the  war  horse  drank  from  a  fount  where  now  is  the 
enclosed  Curia,  while  the  Sabine  arms  were  grounded  in 
the  Roman  Forum. 

"From  this  Spring  Tarpeia  drew  water  for  the  goddess; 
an  earthenware  urn  was  balanced  on  her  head. 

"She  saw  Tatius  exercising  on  the  sandy  plain,  and 
brandishing  his  flashing  arms  about  his  helmet's  yellow 
plumes. 

"She  was  struck  dumb  at  the  king's  beauty  and  his 
royal  arms,  and  her  urn  fell  from  her  careless  hands. 

"Often  she  made  a  pretext  of  ominous  appearances 
in  the  guiltless  Moon,  and  said  she  must  dip  her  hair  in 
the  stream;  often  she  took  silver- white  lilies  to  propitiate 
the  nymphs  that  the  spear  of  Romulus  might  not  hurt 
the  face  of  Tatius;  and  while  ascending  the  Capitol, 
built  among  the  clouds,  in  the  early  smoke  of  evening,  and 
returning  thence,  she  scratched  her  arms  with  the  rough 
brambles;  and  when  she  got  back  from  the  Tarpeian 
citadel  she  wept  over  her  love  pangs.  'Ye  Roman  hills,' 
she  said,  '  how  great  a  guilt  am  I  going  to  lay  upon  Auson- 
ian  maids,  I,  a  faithless  attendant  on  the  Virgin  hearth 
to  which  I  have  been  chosen !  If  any  one  is  surprised  at . 
the  fire  of  Pallas  being  extinct,  let  him  pardon  me;  the 
altar  is  drenched  with  my  tears.  Tomorrow,  so  says, 
report,  fighting  will  be  going  on  all  over  the  city;  do  you 
follow  the  wet  edge  of  the  thorny  ravine.  The  whole 
way  is  slippery  and  treacherous,  for  it  conceals,  through- 


LATIUM  577 

out,  the  waters  that  trickle  noiselessly  in  their  unseen 
channel.' 

'"Oh  that  I  knew  the  strains  of  magic  verse;  this 
tongue,  too,  would  then  have  helped  you,  beautiful 
Sabine,  to  whom  I  bring  no  mean  dower  in  the  betrayal 
of  Rome.' 

" '  And  now  the  fourth  trumpet  is  heralding  the  comingi 
of  light,  and  the  very  stars  are  sinking  into  ocean.  I  will 
court  sleep;  I  will  desire  dreams  about  you.'  She  spoke, 
and  dropped  her  arms  in  sleep,  and  Vesta,  trusty  guardian 
of  fire  brought  from  Troy,  fosters  her  guilt,  and  puts  more 
fires  into  her  bones. 

"There  was  a  holiday  in  the  city,  it  was  the  birthday 
of  the  city  walls. 

"It  was  the  shepherds'  yearly  feast,  a  merry  time  in  the 
city,  when  the  village  dishes  reek  with  delicacies,  and  the 
drunken  rabble  leap  with  their  dirty  feet  over  loose 
heaps  of  blazing  hay. 

"Romulus  ordered  the  pickets  to  rest,  and  the  trumpet 
to  cease  sounding,  and  all  things  combined  to  lull  the 
garrison  to  sleep. 

"Tarpeia,  thinking  this  was  her  time,  goes  to  meet  the 
foe. 

"She  had  betrayed  her  trust  at  the  gate,  and  her 
sleeping  home,  and  she  asked  leave  to  name  a  wedding 
day  at  her  choice. 

"But  Tatius,  who,  though  a  foe,  paid  no  honor  to 
villainy,  said:  'Marry  at  once  and  ascend  the  marriage 
bed  of  my  kingdom.'  He  spoke,  and  overwhelmed  her  by 
throwing  his  followers'  arms  on  her. 

"This,  O  Naiad,  was  fit  payment  for  thy  services." 

In  the  time  of  Propertius  the  site  of  Tarpeia's  house 
on  the  Capitoline  Hill  was  occupied  by  young  ladies  as 
susceptible  to  the  allurements  of  bracelets  as  ever  Tar- 

37 


578  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

peia  could  have  been.  But  in  191 2  a.d.  it  was  occupied  by 
the  office  of  "The  Custodian  of  the  Rock,"  for  whose 
perquisites,  at  cut  rates,  there  was  a  lively  competition 
among  the  children  of  the  adjoining  houses  whose  back- 
yards also  commanded  a  full  view  of  the  famous  rock, 
from  which  the  Spring  no  longer  flows. 

Propertius;  I.    Elegy  i6.     V.  Elegy  4. 


AUSONIA 

The  Spring  of  Ausonia,  the  second  in  the  history  of 
Rome,  came  into  bright  prominence  by  promptly  coun- 
teracting the  trouble  that  Tarpeia's  Spring  had  brought 
upon  the  struggling  nation,  through  the  introduction 
of  the  susceptible  Vestal  to  the  charms  of  the  Sabine 
king. 

It  merits  precedence  over  the  cackling  geese,  for  it 
saved  the  Capitol  nearly  four  hundred  years  before  those 
valiant  birds,  in  390  B.C.,  repulsed  the  Gauls  who 
were  climbing  the  same  rugged,  steep,  and  slippery  path 
that  Tarpeia  followed  in  her  frequent  visits  to  her  Spring 
to  catch  a  glimpse  of  her  scornful  charmer. 

It  appears  to  have  been  located  near  the  Porta  Vimi- 
nalis,  so  called  from  the  vimina  (osiers)  that  grew  plenti- 
fully about  it,  no  doubt  under  the  nourishing  influence  of 
the  waters  of  this  identical  fountain. 

Ovid  says  of  it  that  the  Naiads  of  Ausonia  occupied  a 
spot  near  the  Temple  of  Janus  at  Rome,  a  place  be- 
sprinkled by  a  cool  fountain. 

When  the  Sabines  attacked  the  city  and  had  succeeded 
in  noiselessly  opening  one  of  the  gates,  the  Naiads  first 
caused  an  unusually  large  flow  from  the  Spring,  in  order 
to  flood  the  roadway  to  the  gate;  then,  in  addition,  "they 


LATIUM  579 

placed  sulphur,  with  its  faint  blue  light,  beneath  the 
plenteous  fountain,  and  they  applied  fire  to  the  hollowed 
channel  with  smoking  pitch." 

"By  these  and  other  violent  means,  the  vapor  pene- 
trated to  the  various  sources  of  the  fountain;  and  the 
waters  which,  before,  were  able  to  rival  the  coldness  of 
the  Alps,  yielded  not  in  heat  to  the  flames  themselves. 
The  two  door  posts  smoked  with  the  flaming  spray, 
and  the  gate  was  rendered  impassable  by  this  new 
made  fountain,  until  the  Romans  had  assumed  their 
arms,"  and  were  ready  to  contend  with  the  Sabine 
forces. 

The  happy  result  of  this  fearful  contest,  with  its  un- 
usual ending  in  belated  wedding  feasts,  seems  unfor- 
tunately to  have  overshadowed  interest  in  the  remarkable 
natural  phenomenon  of  a  cold  Spring's  being  tempor- 
arily, and  at  a  very  opportune  moment,  converted  into 
a  flooding  and  boiling  geyser. 

Afterwards  Janus  attempted  to  secure  credit  for  heat- 
ing the  waters  of  this  Spring,  and  pointed  to  his  chapel 
and  altar  nearby  as  having  been  erected  in  acknowledg- 
ment of  his  assistance.  He  said;  "I  showered  forth 
sudden  streams  of  water;  but  first  I  mingled  sulphur  in 
the  hot  streamlets,  that  the  boiling  flood  might  obstruct 
the  passage  of  Tatius." 

And  this  short  and  graphic  account  is  worth  noticing, 
as  it  may  take  this  curious  incident  in  the  life  of  the 
Spring  out  of  the  mythical,  by  immediately  suggesting 
that  it  was  due  to  some  of  those  volcanic  commotions 
that  affected  the  near  neighborhood  in  the  era  when  the 
vents  of  the  fires  that  supplied  Rome  with  building  stone, 
and  the  Alban  lakes  with  beds,  still  frequently  furnished 
heat  and  flame. 

A   somewhat  similar  occurrence   took   place  in  the 


58o  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

province  of  Elis,  in  Greece,  as  late  as  1909,  when,  after 
an  earthquake  in  the  month  of  July,  hot  water  flowed 
from  many  of  the  Springs  in  that  stricken  district. 

Ovid.     Fasti;  I.  line  269. 
Ovid;  Meta.  XIV.  line  786. 


433 
Faunus  and  Picus 

This  Spring  rose  at  the  foot  of  the  Aventine,  a  hill 
which  was  frequented  by  Faunus  and  Picus,  two  very 
ancient  demigods  of  the  country. 

The  hill  since  those  times  has  had  a  varied  and  fre- 
quently unsavory  history;  in  its  groves  took  place  the 
mysteries  of  Dionysus  and  the  pranks  of  the  Maenads, 
until  the  growing  scandals  of  the  proceedings  compelled 
the  Senate  to  suppress  them. 

Later  on,  St.  Paul  is  supposed  to  have  lived  on  the  hill, 
prior  to  his  imprisonments  and  subsequent  execution, 
among  the  Christians  accused  of  setting  fire  to  the  city 
in  the  time  of  Nero,  who,  it  was  rumored,  accompanied 
the  conflagration  with  his  lyre  and  a  song  of  the  sacking 
of  Troy. 

Of  this  Spring,  Ovid  says;  "  It  was  in  a  grove  dark  with 
the  shade  of  the  holm-oak,  on  seeing  which  you  might 
readily  say  'Surely  a  divinity  dwells  here.'" 

"  In  the  center  was  a  grassy  plot,  and  covered  over  with 
green  moss  a  constant  stream  of  water  trickled  from  the 
rock. 

"From  this  stream  Faunus  and  Picus  were  wont 
generally  to  drink  alone." 

While  interest  in  this  fountain  has  been  overshadowed 
by  the  Spring  of  Egeria,  it  is  more  closely  and  strikingly 
connected  with  the  life  of  King  Numa  Pompilius,  the 


LATIUM  581 

sovereign  who  first  succeeded  Romulus,  the  founder  of 
Rome,  than  even  the  one  that  watered  the  field,  and  that 
he  hallowed  for  the  use  of  the  Vestal  virgins,  and  for 
cleansing  their  sanctuary  and  its  appurtenances;  that 
Spring  having  probably  been  farther  north  and  nearer 
the  temple  of  Vesta  that  he  constructed. 

Nmna,  in  many  respects,  forcibly  reminds  one  of 
Moses.  Their  rulerships  were  identical  in  length  of  time 
and  may  be  characterized  as  eras  of  practically  perfect 
peace  with  surrounding  peoples. 

They  were  the  lawgivers  of  their  followers  and  claimed 
divine  inspiration  for  their  enactments,  and  both  of  them 
forbade  the  representation  of  God  in  the  form  of  man  or 
beast.  They  were  fond  of  solitude  remote  from  their 
fellow  men,  and  both  performed  miracles,  among  which 
the  changing  of  Numa's  earthen  dishes  into  precious 
stones  was  both  more  petrifying  and  more  practical  than 
the  transformation  of  the  rod  into  a  serpent. 

The  one  received  from  above  the  stone  tables,  and  the 
other  received  from  the  same  source  the  brazen  shield, 
and  both  founded  a  Priesthood. 

Moses  dreaded  the  fire  of  the  burning  bush,  and  Numa 
feared  the  fire  of  the  lightning,  and  sought  means  to  avert 
it. 

He  consulted  Egeria  as  to  how  this  might  be  done,  but 
even  her  wisdom  did  not  pretend  to  such  extreme  heights 
of  science,  and  she  was  obliged  to  advise  him  to  apply  to 
Faunus  and  Picus;  thereupon  Numa  repaired  to  their 
fountain,  and,  after  sacrificing  a  sheep,  drugged  the  water 
with  wine,  and  waited  nearby  until  the  two,  having  re- 
freshed and  fuddled  themselves  with  copious  draughts, 
fell  into  a  heavy  sleep. 

Then  Numa  sprang  upon  them  and  bound  them 
securely,  and  when  they  had  awakened  from  the  effects 


582  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

of  their  debauch,  compelled  them,  as  the  price  of  their 
liberty,  to  furnish  the  information  he  desired. 

They  told  him  that  Jove  alone  had  full  power  over  his 
weapons  and  then,  with  ineffable  incantations,  they  drew 
down  the  god  of  lightning  from  heaven,  in  which  proceed- 
ing some  suppose  there  is  a  veiled  reference  to  a  discovery 
not  unlike  that  made  by  Franklin  with  his  key  and  kite 
and  wetted  string. 

At  this  descent,  the  tops  of  the  Aventine  forest 
trembled,  as  Mount  Sinai  quaked,  and  then,  as  Moses 
argued  on  Mount  Horeb,  Numa  engaged  in  a  discussion 
and  sharp-wit  contest  with  Jupiter,  and  learned  that  the 
lightning  might  be  averted  by  means  of  an  onion,  some 
hairs,  and  a  fish ;  a  formula  that  suggests  an  impersona- 
tion, by  one  of  the  two  gods  of  the  Spring,  before  the 
effects  of  its  winey  mixture  had  been  thoroughly  slept 
away. 

At  other  times,  when  Numa  was  in  need  of  new  knowl- 
edge or  information,  he  followed  a  more  lazy  and  leisurely 
course;  dressing  himself  in  fresh  fleeces,  and  wreathing 
his  temples  with  the  beechen  bough,  he  would  go  to 
the  grove  and  sacrifice  a  sheep  to  Faunus  and  another 
to  Sleep,  and,  after  twice  sprinkling  his  head  with 
water  from  the  fountain,  would  compose  himself  for 
slumber. 

Then  when  Night,  her  gentle  brow  crowned  with  the 
poppy,  came  with  an  escort  of  shadowy  Dreams,  Faunus 
would  appear,  and  through  the  agency  of  a  vision  utter 
words  and  give  the  king  oracular  instruction  or  directions, 
whose  meaning,  when  he  awoke,  Egeria  would  resolve 
and  make  clear  to  the  mystified  monarch. 

It  was  in  Numa's  reign  that  metal  was  first  impressed 
with  the  figure  of  an  ox  to  be  used  as  Roman  money,  and, 
possibly,  in  this  incident  could  be  found  a  suggestion 


LATIUM  583 

that  might  give  a  deeper  insight  into  the  peculiar  castings 
or  coinings  of  the  "Gods"  that  were  called  the  "Golden 
Calf,"  out  of  the  jewels  of  gold  that  the  Israelites  bor- 
rowed of  the  Egyptians,  on  the  eve  of  their  exodus  under 
the  lead  of  Moses. 

Ovid;  Fasti;  III.  line  29S  and  300. 
Ovid;  Fasti;  IV.  line  666. 


434 
Egeria 

There  was  a  Roman  Spring  that  became  lastingly 
linked  with  the  name  of  the  nymph  Egeria.  Juvenal 
refers  to  it  as  her  trysting  place  with  King  Numa,  and 
indicates  that  it  was  not  very  far  from  the  Porta  Capena. 

The  use  of  such  an  elastic  measure  of  distance  very 
probably  explains  why  each  of  several  fountains,  that 
are  miles  apart,  is  today  asserted  to  be  the  original  Spring 
of  Numa's  favorite ;  for  the  broad  valley  of  the  Campagna 
that  stretches  from  Rome,  at  the  Porta  Capena,  to  the 
feet  of  the  distant  mountains,  produced  Springs  enough 
to  warrant  the  building  of  many  aqueducts,  and  feed  the 
pride  of  several  fountain  owners,  by  giving  them  ample 
opportunity  to  point  to  more  than  one  grotto  as  the  home 
of  Egeria's  Spring. 

Thus  three  Springs  were  raised  to  honor,  with  even  less 
effort  than  Sancho  Panza's  illustrious  friend  exerted  in 
giving  many  heads  to  one  table,  by  changing  his  seat 
from  one  chair  to  another. 

The  site  of  this  fountain  is  closely  associated  with  the 
earliest  history  of  Rome,  as  Numa  Pompilius  frequented 
the  grotto  in  its  thick  grove  while  preparing  his  codex  of 
laws,  which,  perhaps  with  the  view  of  securing  for  it  more 


584  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

ready  and  undisputed  sanction,  he  attributed  to  the  in- 
spiration of  the  nymph  Egeria. 

In  subsequent  ages  the  Spring  and  its  surroundings 
saw  many  changes;  the  place  was  beautified  with  temples, 
and  the  native  tufo,  and  the  margin  of  green  turf  that 
enclosed  the  Spring,  gave  place  to  a  marble  basin  and 
paving;  the  neighborhood  was  converted  into  a  park,  and, 
the  face  of  nature  having  been  changed  the  influence  of 
Egeria,  its  presiding  genius,  was  lost. 

Later,  when  extravagance,  luxury,  and  the  cost  of  high 
living  had  increased  the  greed  of  the  people,  and  the  city's 
need  of  money,  the  park  was  rented  out  for  habitations 
to  a  rabble  of  Jew  beggars  that  Domitian  had  driven  from 
the  city. 

The  ancient  Porta  Capena,  which  is  often  confounded 
with  the  present  gate  of  San  Sebastian,  was  probably  a 
mile  closer  to  the  city  than  the  latter,  near  which  the 
First  Mile-stone  was  found. 

In  Juvenal's  time,  some  800  years  after  Numa  had 
passed  away  and  eighteen  hundred  years  ago,  two  Roman 
gentlemen  paused  near  the  Porta  Capena,  and  chatted 
entertainingly  about  the  Spring,  the  times,  and  their 
personal  affairs. 

One  of  them,  Umbritius  by  name,  had  just  given  up  his 
residence  in  Rome  and  was  on  his  way  to  Cumas,  followed 
by  a  cart  containing  his  personal  effects.  His  reasons  for 
changing  his  lodgings  were  numerous,  and,  read  by  them- 
selves, might  be  taken  for  the  talk  of  a  dweller  in  some 
large  city  in  the  XXth  century;  he  was  fleeing  from  the 
constant  dread  of  fires,  from  the  perpetual  tearing  down 
of  houses,  and  from  the  thousand  dangers  of  a  cruel  city ; 
and  perhaps  he  refers  to  something  like  the  interminable 
song  of  the  present  Summer  Restaurant,  when  he  com- 
plains of  the  poets,  spouting  even  in  the  month  of  August! 


LATIUM  585 

Rome,  he  says,  is  no  place  for  honest  pursuits,  and  he  is 
leaving  it  to  those  who  turn  black  into  white,  and  who 
barter  in  contracts;  contracts  for  building  temples,  for 
clearing  rivers,  for  constructing  harbors,  for  cleansing 
sewers,  and  for  what  not.  In  short,  he  is  moving  to  the 
country,  to — much  as  a  New  Yorker  might  speak  of 
going  to  Hempstead — the  place  where  the  aviator  rested 
his  weary  wings. 

Little  could  good  Umbritius  have  dreamed  at  that  time 
that  Lieut.  Vivaldi  of  the  same  nativity  would  nearly 
twenty  centuries  later,  on  the  twentieth  of  August.  1910, 
rest  his  weary  wings,  and  lose  his  life,  by  the  fall  of  an 
army  aeroplane  within  a  few  miles  of  where  he  stood, 
much  as  Icarus,  the  too  venturesome  son  of  the  pioneer 
in  airmanship,  brought  his  untimely  experiment  to  a 
close  in  a  more  amateurish  but  similar,  sudden  descent. 

Rome,  Umbritius  goes  on  to  say,  is  changed  in  many 
ways  that  make  it  a  less  desirable  residence  than 
formerly; — Here,  he  continues,  where  Numa  used  to 
make  assignations  with  his  nocturnal  mistress,  the  grove 
of  the  once  hallowed  fountain,  and  the  temples,  are,  in 
our  days,  let  out  to  Jews  whose  whole  furniture  is  a 
basket  and  a  bundle  of  hay.  Every  single  tree  is  made  to 
pay  a  rent,  and,  the  Camenas  having  been  ejected,  the 
wood  is  one  mass  of  beggars. 

Afterwards,  the  neighborhood  improved,  and  Byron 
who  visited  the  Spring  in  181 7,  and  devoted  to  it  five 
stanzas  in  Childe  Harold,  wrote  that  its  grove  was  for- 
merly frequented  in  Summer,  particularly  on  the  first 
Sunday  in  May,  by  the  modern  Romans,  who  attached  a 
salubrious  quality  to  the  fountain,  which  trickles  from  an 
orifice  at  the  bottom  of  the  vault  of  the  grotto  and  creeps 
down  the  matted  grass  into  the  brook  Aquataccio,  which 
is  the  ancient  Almo.    Byron's  poetical  picture  shows  the 


S86  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

fountain  robbed  by  the  villa  owners,  and  almost  reduced 
to  the  primitive  stage  that  Juvenal  sighed  for; — 

The  mosses  of  thy  fountain  still  are  sprinkled 

With  thine  Elysian  water  drops;  the  face 

Of  thy  cave  guarded  Spring,  with  years  unwrinkled, 

Reflects  the  meek  eyed  genius  of  the  place, 

Whose  green,  wild  margin,  now  no  more  erase 

Art's  works;  nor  must  the  delicate  waters  sleep, 

Prison 'd  in  marble,  bubbling  from  the  base 

Of  a  cleft  statue,  with  a  gentle  leap 

The  rill  runs  o'er,  and  round,  fern,  flowers  and  ivy  creep. 

In  ancient  times  the  Almo  was  renowned  for  its  medici- 
nal and  purifying  properties;  the  cattle  were  brought  to 
its  banks  to  be  healed  of  their  diseases,  and  apparently 
its  virtues  applied  not  only  to  brutes  but  to  deities,  for  it 
was  the  custom  of  the  Priests  of  Cybele,  every  year  on  a 
certain  day  in  spring,  to  bring  the  sacred  image  of  that 
goddess  from  her  temple  on  the  Palatine  and  wash  it  in 
this  water.  Later,  and  until  a  few  years  back,  the  image 
of  our  Saviour  was  annually  brought  from  the  church  of 
Santa  Martina  in  the  Forum,  and  washed  in  this  stream. 

Among  those,  who  consider  that  this  Spring  was  within 
the  boundaries  of  the  city,  is  Lanciani,  who  describes  it 
and  its  grotto  as  being,  in  1880,  in  the  lower  grounds  of 
the  Villa  Fonseca  at  the  foot  of  the  Cselian  Hill  near  the 
valley  della  Ferratella. 

Several  years  later,  however,  the  advance  guard  in  the 
march  of  modern  improvement  attacked  the  fountain, 
and  the  military  engineers  buried  it  while  they  were 
building  the  new  hospital  near  Santo  Stefano  Rotondo. 

Still,  persistently,  as  when  in  human  form  she  would 
brook  no  repression  in  her  grief,  "the  Springs  forced  their 
way  through  the  newly  made  ground  and  appeared  again 
in  the  beautiful  nymphaeum  of  the  villa  Mattei  von 


LATIUM  587 

Hoffmann,  at  the  corner  of  the  Via  di  Porta  S.  Sebas- 
tiano." 

Other  writers  who  think  of  the  Spring  as  outside  of  the 
city,  though  not  as  far  away  as  the  Alban  Hills,  identify 
the  ancient  fountain  with  the  one  now  in  a  grotto  a  couple 
of  miles  beyond  the  walls  of  Rome.  Both  of  these  sites 
may  be  reached  by  the  same  road;  and  a  visit  to  the 
fragments  of  the  house  of  Numa  on  the  Sacra  Via,  where 
he  resided  after  leaving  the  Sabine  city  of  Cures,  and  to 
the  Aventine,  where  he  raised  his  altar  to  Jupiter,  may 
induce  a  fitting  mental  mood  in  which  to  undertake  a 
search  for  the  true  fountain  of  Egeria,  the  nymph  that 
Ntuna  loved  for  more  than  two  score  years. 

A  more  detailed  impression  of  the  topography  will  be 
received  if  the  search  be  conducted  afoot,  which  it  may  be 
felt  is  a  fitting  way  to  approach  the  shrine  of  the  nymph 
who  inspired  the  laws  that  for  many  generations  governed 
the  Mistress  City  of  the  world,  and  the  myriad  peoples 
she  conquered  and  ruled. 

Leaving  the  Forum,  a  path  over  a  hill  and  through  a 
dilapidated  park  brings  one  to  the  Via  San  Sebastiano, 
which,  by  a  sinuous  coiirse  and  under  changing  names, 
leads  to  the  fountain;  a  few  yards  from  where  it  crosses 
the  Brook  Marrana,  of  Lanciani's  Egeria,  near  the  Via 
San  Gregorio,  a  small  rounded  mass  of  masonry  marks  a 
conjectural  site  of  the  ancient  gate,  the  "moist  Capena" 
where  the  Via  Appia  began.  In  those  days  when  the 
Brook  was  probably  left  to  its  own  devices  and,  during 
heavy  rains,  came  up  out  of  its  narrow  bed,  and  spread 
itself  abroad,  as  even  the  Tiber  has  a  fondness  for  some- 
times doing,  there  was  no  doubt  wading  enough  to  give 
the  gateway  a  wide  reputation  for  moistness  among  the 
many  travelers  who,  either  going  or  coming,  were  forced 
to  flounder  through  its  muddy  reaches. 


588  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

The  Brook  passes  the  mill  of  E.  Mattel  just  before 
reaching  the  road,  and  crosses  to  the  right  under  the 
latter,  nearly  opposite  the  large  brown  mass  of  the  re- 
mains of  the  extensive  baths  of  Caracalla,  whose  cisterns 
and  cold  plunge,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away,  it  possibly 
helped  to  supply  when  they  were  opened,  nearly  two 
hundred  years  after  it  had  made  the  Porta  Capena  a 
synonynm  for  waste  water. 

A  quarter  of  a  mile  farther  on,  the  road  divides,  be- 
coming the  Via  Porta  Latina  on  the  left,  and  in  the  angle 
here  is  a  column  in  front  of  a  gateway  leading  into  a 
forest-like  garden,  and  on  the  left  a  church. 

A  quarter  of  a  mile  beyond  is  the  door  to  the  tomb  of 
the  Scipios,  set  in  a  hill  hugged  wall  with  a  single  large 
cypress  tree  above  it,  and  then  the  Porta  San  Sebastiano, 
with  two  round  towers,  and  the  Via  delle  Mura  crossing 
the  way  between  them.  Beyond  is  a  Custom  House  with 
its  scales,  and  a  staff  of  officers  armed  with  long,  thin, 
rapierlike  rods,  with  which  they  prod  the  contents  of  the 
city-bound  carts  in  their  search  for  wine  and  other  duti- 
able supplies. 

Then,  passing  the  Via  del  Travicello,  the  cane  bordered 
Almo,  here  ten  feet  wide,  is  reached.  Beyond  the  Almo, 
near  the  church  Domine  Quo  Vadis  marking  the  meeting 
of  the  Master  with  Peter,  the  paved  road  forks  into  the 
Via  Ardiatina  on  the  right  and  the  Via  Antiqua  on  the 
left;  and  a  short  distance  ahead  of  this  forking  there 
branches  off,  to  the  left  of  the  latter  road,  a  country  field- 
road.  Following  this  field-road  a  little  bricked  up  arch 
is  passed,  and  then  a  field-gate  on  the  left.  From  here 
the  roadside  walls  give  place  to  thick  hedges,  until, 
suddenly,  they  too  cease,  and  an  unobstructed  view  is 
had  of  the  distant  Alban  mountains  ahead,  and  of  a 
pretty,  green,  rolling  country  round  about,  close  at  hand, 


LATIUM  589 

with  the  Almo,  now  tree  lined  instead  of  cane  bordered, 
meandering  through  the  valley  which  is  covered  with 
fields  and  meadows,  and  dotted  with  grazing  cows  and, 
here  and  there,  a  plowman  turning  up  the  deep  red  soil 
behind  a  pair  of  white  oxen  whose  early  progenitors, 
bred  for  the  sacrificial  altars  and  leading  a  toilless  life, 
were  supposed  to  owe  their  priestly  requirement,  of 
immaculate  coats,  to  some  subtle  quality  in  the  waters 
of  the  Anio,  from  which  they  drew  their  draughts,  and 
which  join  the  Tiber  a  little  farther  north  where  Mettus 
pitched  his  camp. 

A  quarter  of  a  mile  farther  on,  the  road  approaches  to 
within  250  feet  of  the  Almo,  where  the  Temple  to  Deus 
Rediculus  stands,  almost  on  its  banks.  This  ancient  little 
building,  with  terra  cotta  decorations  and  brick  pillars 
capped  with  the  same  material,  which  may  once  have 
been  a  tomb,  is  now  used  as  a  barn  by  the  farmer  whose 
house  stands  next  to  it,  and  its  basement  has  become  a 
storage  room  for  the  family,  and  a  playhouse  for  the 
children. 

In  the  next  half-mile  three  small  streams  are  encoun- 
tered; one  runs  through  a  stone  canal  two  feet  wide; 
another  crosses  the  road  in  its  natural  bed;  and  the  third 
runs  alongside  of  the  road,  which,  half  a  mile  beyond  the 
Temple,  passes  directly  in  front  of  the  Shrine  of  Egeria, 
once  a  dark  grotto  from  which  issued  a  Spring  of  running 
water  that  irrigated  a  grove  that  surrounded  it;  then, 
velvety  turf  enclosed  the  water  with  a  margin  of  green, 
and  no  marble  profaned  the  native  tufo.  But  that  was 
so  many  centuries  ago  that,  even  nearly  two  thousand 
years  before  today,  the  reflective  Roman  regretted  the 
presence  of  embellishing  marble,  and  felt  it  chilled  the 
influence  of  the  presiding  genius.  Today  the  marble  has 
disappeared,  burned  it  may  be,  for  lime,  or  perhaps  still 


590  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

intact  and  more  appropriately  adorning  some  Roman 
building;  and  only  the  brick  and  cement,  that  made  its 
backing,  are  now  to  be  seen  in  the  big  chamber  into 
which  the  original  grotto  has  been  enlarged,  by  cutting 
back  into  the  hill  out  of  which  the  Spring  still  flows. 

It  is  a  spacious,  arched,  windowless,  three  sided  cham- 
ber with  three  vacant  statue  niches  on  each  of  two  sides ; 
the  front  being  open  and  facing  the  road. 

The  ceiling  is  some  thirty  feet  in  height,  the  hill  itself 
having  a  rise  of  a  hundred  feet  or  more,  and  the  chamber 
is  approximately  25  feet  wide  by  60  feet  long. 

Projecting  from  the  rear  wall,  and  some  three  and  a 
half  feet  above  the  floor,  is  a  slab  on  which  reclines  the 
life-size  statue  of  a  woman.  This  figure,  slightly  raised 
at  the  shoulders,  portrays  an  attitude  of  attention  and 
suggests  that  she  is  listening  for  the  expected  approach 
of  Numa. 

The  statue  is  now  armless  and  headless,  and  pieces 
have  been  chipped  and  broken  from  the  body  whose 
surface  has  become  the  muster-roll  of  a  horde  of  vandals, 
the  names  scrawled  with  various  colored  leads,  and  in  all 
sizes  of  letters. 

Giving  off  from  this  chamber,  on  the  left  and  at  the 
entrance,  is  a  small  anteroom,  with  a  statue  niche  at  the 
rear,  and  there  was  probably  once  a  counterpart  of  this 
room,  opposite  to  it,  on  the  right  hand  side  of  the  large 
chamber. 

The  Spring  is  behind  the  left  sidewall  of  the  chamber, 
and,  through  a  break,  in  the  masonry  of  that  wall,  making 
a  small  cave-like  opening  some  six  feet  above  the  level  of 
the  floor,  the  water  can  be  seen  there,  running  in  a  curved 
channel  that  conducts  it  to  the  back  of  the  statue,  under 
which  it  makes  its  first  appearance  inside  of  the  chamber. 

The  recHning  statue's  slab  was  supported  by  three 


LATIUM  591 

marble  brackets,  the  center  one  now  in  part  missing; 
these  form  hollow  troughs,  three  inches  wide  and  open  at 
the  front,  through  which  the  water  comes  out,  falHng  in 
three  streams  into  an  eighteen  inch  wide  stone  channel 
in  the  floor.  This  channel,  carried  around  the  room, 
iorms  a  rectangular  canal  border  to  the  floor,  of  which  it 
thus  makes  an  island,  and  has  its  outlet  at  the  entrance  in 
front.  From  there  the  stream  flows  under  the  road,  and 
under  a  two-foot  wide  stone  canal  that  borders  it,  through 
a  skeleton  grove,  and  a  partly  cultivated  forty-acre  field 
that  offers  turnips  at  its  westerly  bank  and  sweet  clover 
at  the  other,  and,  after  traveling  five  hundred  feet  from 
the  grotto,  pours  into  the  Almo,  which  has  come  from  the 
«ast,  higher  up  in  the  valley,  and  is  not  created  by  the 
Spring. 

The  Spring's  water  is  not  very  cold,  but  it  is  not  insipid 
and,  indeed,  has  no  peculiarity  of  taste. 

The  ancient  grove  is  now  meagerly  represented  by  a 
few  trees  across  the  road  and  in  front  of  the  grotto;  they 
are  neither  lofty  nor  venerable,  being  barely  thirty  feet 
high,  and  not  over  fifty  years  old,  and  would  not  attract  a 
lingering  glance  but  for  their  charming  apparel  of  ivy, 
and  the  rather  remote  possibility  that  they  may  be  lineal 
descendants  from  the  forest  that  first  shaded  the  Spring 
and  formed  the  Bosca  Sacra  of  its  presiding  nymph. 

One  can  easily  fancy  that,  even  as  a  natural  grotto, 
this  was  a  cozy  place  in  which  either  to  frame  a  nation's 
code  or  loiter  with  a  nimble-witted  nymph.  Lying,  as  it 
does  some  three  miles  from  the  town,  and  cushioned  in 
the  quietude  of  the  hill-sprinkled  valley,  it  would  still,  if 
refurnished  and  decorated,  be  an  ideal  study  for  a  law 
compiler ;  the  gentle  splashing  of  the  water  from  the  three 
spouts  below  the  statue,  where  the  moisture  has  fostered 
a  luxuriant  growth  of  delicate  maidenhair  fern,  and  the 


592  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

water's  metrical  murmur  as  it  glides  around  the  sides  of 
the  island  floor,  affording  restful  and  suggestful  rhythms 
in  which  Nature  seems  vaguely  to  whisper  what  might 
either  inspire  a  deviser  of  laws  or  lull  a  dreamer  and 
dallier. 

From  the  front  of  the  grotto  there  is  an  unobstructed 
view,  westerly  through  the  valley,  to  the  towers  of  the 
San  Sebastian  gate  a  mile  and  a  half  away  in  a  direct 
Hne;  and,  before  those  towers  were  raised,  the  grotto 
could  have  been  descried  from  the  Porta  Capena;  so  that, 
altogether,  this  location  seems  to  fit  the  somewhat  in- 
definite allusions  to  the  position  of  Egeria's  Spring  rather 
better  than  any  of  the  other  places  do. 

The  friend  of  Juvenal's  Umbritius,  standing  near  the 
moist  Porta  Capena,  would  hardly  have  pointed  "down 
this  valley  of  Egeria"  to  the  grotto,  had  it  been  up  the 
hill  on  the  left  near  the  Villa  Hoffman,  or  had  it  been 
near  Lake  Nemi,  among  the  Alban  mountains,  a  thousand 
feet  higher  still,  and  nearly  twenty  miles  away.  But, 
from  the  Porta  Capena  to  the  grotto  described,  there  is 
quite  an  appreciable  descent  almost  to  where  the  Almo 
and  the  water  from  the  Spring  merge  together  in  the 
clover-turnip  field. 

This  place,  too,  while  far  enough  away  from  the  city 
to  be  secluded,  is  easily  accessible,  being  but  a  gallop  of 
less  than  a  fourth  of  an  hour  through  the  vale  to  the 
grotto;  whereas  the  neighborhood  of  the  source  of  the 
Marrana  Brook  is  almost  at  the  center  of  the  town  as 
Numa  knew  it;  and,  as  for  Lake  Nemi,  the  forty-mile 
journey  there  and  back,  with  its  slow,  tedious,  and  long 
uphill  climb,  would  have  precluded  those  frequent  visits 
to  the  Spring  that,  as  Livy  asserts,  were  made  by  Numa — 
even  if  the  Spring  at  Nemi  had  existed  in  Numa's  life- 
time.    Ovid,   however,  plainly  states  that  it   was  not 


LATIUM  593 

until  Numa  had  passed  away  that  the  Nemi  Spring,  fed 
by  the  tears  of  expiring  Egeria,  began  to  flow,  and 
helped  to  form  the  lovely  little  lake  it  still  maintains 
in  perfect  beauty,  deep  in  the  bosom  of  the  Alban 
mountains. 

Juvenal;  Satire  III. 


435 

JUTURNA 

The  fountain  of  Jutuma  is  connected  with  the  nymph 
of  that  name  whose  charms  attracted  the  admiration  of 
Jupiter,  and  whose  favorite  method  of  eluding  him  was  to 
plunge  beneath  the  waters  of  the  streams  by  which  she 
was  wont  to  pass  her  leisure  hours. 

This  practice  perhaps  suggested  the  idea  that  she  would 
be  flattered  and  pleased  by  being  created  a  goddess  of  the 
Pools  and  Murmuring  Streams,  and  Jupiter  accordingly 
conferred  upon  her  that  honor  in  addition  to  his  affec- 
tions. That  she  was  a  being  of  unusual  charms  might  be 
inferred  from  the  fact  that  Juno  preferred  her  among  all 
her  Latian  rivals. 

Her  Spring  was  near  the  temple  of  Vesta  by  the  Roman 
Forum,  and  was  the  one  at  which  Castor  and  Pollux 
watered  their  horses  on  the  15th  of  July  496  B.C.  after 
winning  the  battle  of  Lake  Regillus,  near  Frascati,  for 
the  Romans  under  Postumius  when  their  opponents,  the 
Latins,  were  on  the  verge  of  victory.  According  to 
Macaulay's  lay  of  the  incident  the  heavenly  twins,  that 
now  form  the  constellation  Gemini,  who  dashed  into  the 
battle,  their  armor  and  steeds  as  white  as  snow,  came  out 
of  it  red  with  gore  and  they  not  only  watered  but  washed 
their  horses  in  the  Spring. 
38 


594;  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

A  temple  was  erected  to  the  heavenly  heroes  just  in 
front  of  the  Spring,  and  for  centuries  afterwards  the 
anniversary  of  the  battle  was  celebrated  with  one  of  the 
most  imposing  spectacles  of  the  Eternal  City,  a  parade  of 
the  equestrian  body  of  many  thousand  horsemen  who 
rode  to  the  Spring  to  commemorate  the  victory  and  ta 
honor  the  two  horsemen  who  brought  it  about. 

Sacrifices  were  offered  to  Juturna  on  the  i  ith  of  Janu- 
ary, and  the  water  of  her  Spring  was  used  in  the  nearby 
temple  of  the  Vestal  Virgins. 

The  fountain  was  found  during  excavations,  in  ^898^ 
which  revealed  traces  of  a  marble  basin  of  the  Imperial 
period,  and  a  larger  and  older  basin  of  tufa  which  had 
originally  received  the  water. 

The  only  three  columns  of  the  temple  of  Castor  and 
Pollux  left  standing  are  conspicuous  pointers  to  the  loca- 
tion of  Juturna's  Spring,  which  lies  some  twenty  feet 
southeast  of  them.  Its  waters  are  contained  in  a  brick 
tank  floored  and  sided  with  a  casing  of  marble,  from  the 
center  of  which  rises  a  base  of  brick  still  partially  layered 
with  marble,  the  top  of  which,  now  covered  with  a  thick 
growth  of  grass,  formerly  supported  a  group  of  the  heroes 
and  their  horses.  At  the  bottom  of  the  tank  in  the  south- 
east end  is  a  low  arch  for  the  egress  of  the  water;  and  on 
the  northwest  side  opposite  the  three  columns  of  the 
temple,  is  a  perpendicular  tube  with  perforations  to 
prevent  overflowing.  Some  of  the  water  of  the  fountain 
was  conducted  through  a  lead  pipe  to  the  well  of  the 
Sacrarium  just  south  of  it. 

The  water,  now  perfectly  clear,  is  about  fifteen  inches 
deep;  and  the  bottom  of  the  tank  is  some  fifteen  feet 
below  the  level  of  the  forum's  present  pavement. 

Juturna  also  presided  over  another  fountain  which  was 
by  the  Niunicum,  a  small  river  near  Lavinium  in  Latium; 


LATIUM  59S 

its  waters  were  used  in  sacrifices,  and  were  famous  for 
their  healing  qualities. 

Ovid;  Fasti;  I.  In  707.     II.  In  s86. 
Propertius;  IV.  Elegy  32. 
iEneid;  XII.  In  178. 


Mercury 

The  fountain  of  Mercury  was  in  the  Via  Appia,  near 
the  Capenian  Gate. 

Only  one  of  the  ancient  writers  has  referred  to  it,  and 
of  its  early  history  he  says  nothing  whatever;  but  his 
description  of  its  attraction  for  tradesmen,  their  faith  in 
its  waters,  and  their  ceremonies  and  prayers  when  they 
had  visited  the  fountain,  are  humorously  entertaining, 
and  show  why  "being  in  trade,  "  even  in  those  early  days, 
cast  suspicion  upon  the  morals  and  characters  of  persons 
so  engaged. 

Ovid  says;  "If  we  may  believe  those  who  have  experi- 
enced it,  this  fountain  has  a  divine  efficacy.  Hither 
comes  the  tradesman  having  a  girdle  around  his  robes, 
and  in  a  state  of  purity. 

"He  draws  some  of  the  water  to  carry  it  away  in  a 
perfumed  urn.  In  this  a  laurel  branch  is  dipped  and  with 
the  wet  laurel  are  sprinkled  all  the  things  which  are  in- 
intended  to  change  owners.  He  sprinkles  his  own  hair, 
too,  with  the  dripping  bough,  and  runs  through  his 
prayers  in  a  voice  accustomed  to  deceive;  'Wash  away 
the  perjuries  of  passed  times,'  says  he;  'Wash  away  my 
Ijdng  words  of  the  passed  day,  whether  I  have  made  thee 
to  attest  for  me,  or  whether  I  have  invoked  the  great 
Godhead  of  Jove,  whom  I  did  not  intend  to  listen  to  me. 
Or,  if  I  have  knowingly  deceived  any  other  of  the  Gods, 


5.96  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

or  any  Goddess,  let  the  swift  breezes  bear  away  my  wicked 
speeches.  Let  there  be  no  trace  left  of  my  perjuries  on  the 
morrow,  and  let  not  the  Gods  care  whatever  I  may  chose 
to  say.' 

" '  Do  but  give  me  profits;  give  me  the  delight  that  rises 
from  gain,  and  grant  that  it  may  be  lucrative  to  me  to 
impose  on  my  customers.' 

"From  on  high  Mercury  laughs  at  his  worshipper 
while  making  such  requests  as  these,  remembering  that 
once  on  a  time  he  himself  stole  the  Ortygian  kine." 

Mercury  (possibly  a  form  of  the  Latin  word  "mercari" 
to  traffic),  the  God  with  many  attributes,  among  which 
were  craft  and  theft,  had  a  temple  dedicated  to  him  in 
Rome  as  the  patron  of  traders,  more  than  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  before  the  time  of  Christ,  and  his  festival 
was  held  on  the  fifteenth  day  of  May,  a  month  that  de- 
rives its  name  from  his  mother's,  Maia,  as  the  day  Wed- 
nesday, in  French,  derives  its  name  from  his  own. 

If  it  be  accepted  that  this  fountain  is  the  Spring  which 
is  still  flowing  near  the  old  Porta  Capena,  and  which  is 
assumed  by  some  to  be  the  fountain  of  Egeria,  then,  an 
otherwise  lost  fountain  is  accounted  for,  and  the  fountain 
of  Mercury  here,  and  the  Spring  in  the  grotto  "down  the 
valley,"  become  the  present  representatives  of  the  two 
old  Springs  described,  one  of  them  by  Juvenal,  and  both 
of  them  by  Ovid. 

A  brook  running  down  to  the  highway  leads  one 
directly  back  to  its  source,  the  Spring,  which  is,  however, 
not  visible  from  the  road,  although  it  is  but  a  few  rods 
distant. 

The  secluded  precinct  of  the  fountain  was  well  adapted 
for  use  as  a  praying-place  for  predatory  traders,  a  place 
where  they  could  make  damaging  admissions  and  con- 
fess themselves  without  fear  of  being  overheard  by  their 


LATIUM  S9f 

customers  passing  along  the  highway  close  at  hand.  The 
Spring's  concealed  nook  is  perhaps,  even  today,  quite  as 
retired  as  it  was  formerly,  and  it  might  still  be  used  for  its 
ancient  purposes,  if  the  rogueries,  and  the  trade  trickeries 
of  former  degenerate  days  had  not  entirely  disappeared 
under  the  overspreading  growth  of  honesty  that  now 
happily  covers  all  fields  of  modern  merchandizing. 

Ovid;  Fasti;  V.  In  673. 


437 
Springs  of  the  Apostles 

In  the  first  century  of  the  Christian  Era  there  were 
added  to  the  Springs  of  pagan  Rome  four  orthodox  foun- 
tains that  sprang  up  miraculously,  one  of  them  at  the 
feet  of  St.  Peter,  and  the  other  three  at  the  head  of  St. 
Paul. 

438 
St.  Peter's  Spring 

It  is  a  matter  of  uncertainty,  according  to  some 
skeptical  writers,  whether  the  Apostle  Peter  ever  resided 
at  Rome ;  and  it  would  be  a  curious  instance  of  the  irony 
of  fate,  if,  as  some  of  the  Roman  artists  claim,  a  large 
part  of  the  Christian  church  is  today  paying  homage  to 
the  pagan's  Jove,  in  reverencing  the  statue  that  stands 
for  the  Apostle  in  St.  Peter's  church;  while  another  part 
is  venerating  the  mother  of  Antichrist,  in  the  form  of  the 
bronze  Madonna  in  San  Agostino. 

Whether  or  no  the  Apostle  was  ever  at  Rome  in  the 
flesh,  he  is  now  ubiquitously  in  evidence  there,  in  name 
and  effigy  and  relic.  The  Chapel  of  the  Confession  claims 
his  body,  and  the  Lateran  his  head,  for  he  met,  though 


598  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

painlessly,  the  fate  of  St.  Paul  in  addition,  to  his  cruci- 
fixion. A  church  was  built  over  the  spot  where  his  cross 
stood,  and  other  sanctuaries  are  entrusted  with  the  keep- 
ing of  his  chair,  enclosed  in  another  of  bronze;  his  table; 
his  chains;  and  many  minor  mementoes. 

Even  from  the  blur  that  represents  the  city  at  a  dis- 
tance, the  first  outlines  that  resolve  into  form  and  fix  the 
pilgrim's  eye  are  those  of  the  towering  dome  of  the 
Apostle's  church;  and  the  little  chapel,  whose  flooring 
still  preserves  the  footprints  of  Jesus,  where  Christ  inter- 
cepted him  shamefacedly  fleeing  from  martyrdom,  and 
which  takes  its  name  from  the  now  classic  query,  "Quo 
Domine  Vadis?"  welcomes  the  wayfarer,  sometime 
before  he  has  entered  the  gates  of  the  city,  to  find  inside 
the  statue  of  the  poor  fisherman  topping  the  column  that 
first  supported  the  effigy  of  an  emperor. 

According  to  Church  history  the  Apostle  not  only 
visited  Rome,  but  was  constrained  to  reside  there  by 
being  imprisoned  in  what  is  now  known  as  the  Career 
Mamertinus,  a  little  cell  that  is  still  shown  intact  by  the 
north-east  corner  of  the  Forum,  and  which  though  one 
of  the  oldest  rooms  in  Rome  is  in  a  much  better  state  of 
preservation  than  any  other  ancient  building  of  that 
classic  confine,  not  even  excepting  the  Colosseum,  which, 
next  to  the  pyramids,  is  perhaps  the  most  solid  of  all 
built  up  structures  of  the  ancients  that  have  survived  the 
wreck  of  time  and  man  and  the  throes  of  the  earth. 

The  cell  is  a  little  westward  of  Romulus'  black  marble 
tomb,  and  but  a  few  feet  from  the  arch  of  Severus  which 
marked  the  ideal  center  of  the  city. 

It  was  in  the  lowest  part  of  this  cell,  a  small  dungeon 
that  is  reached  today  by  descending  a  spiral  stairway  to 
nearly  a  score  of  feet  below  the  level  of  the  Forum's 
pavement,  that  St.  Peter  was  confined,  maybe,  about  the 


LATIUM  599 

year  64  a.d.,  and  that,  in  earlier  times,  had  perished 
Jugiirtha,  Vercingetorix,  and  other  of  the  victims  of 
Rome.  In  his  account  of  the  execution  of  the  Consul 
Lentulus  for  his  connection  with  the  Catiline  conspiracy, 
Sallust,  writing  63  years  before  Christ,  says  this  cell, 
then  only  twelve  feet  underground  and  called  the  Tullian 
dungeon,  was  a  part  of  a  prison,  and  that  its  absolute 
solitude  and  darkness  were  made  all  the  more  horrible 
by  the  disgusting  stench  from  the  accumulations  of  filth 
that  it  contained. 

A  small  church,  called  San  Giuseppe  dei  Falegnami, 
has  been  erected  over  the  Career  which  latter  was  possibly 
originally  a  Wellhouse  or  tullianum,  and  was  perhaps 
thence  traditionally  attributed  to  Servius  Tullius,  it 
being  afterwards  used  as  a  place  of  confinement.  The 
little  duplex  apartment  consists  of  two  quadrangular 
chambers,  one  below  the  other;  the  lower  one  accessible 
only  through  the  ceiling. 

After  paying  an  admission  fee  of  twenty-five  centesimi, 
one  enters  through  an  iron  pipe  turnstile  and  descends 
by  stone  steps  to  the  floor  below  the  level  of  the  entrance; 
a  further  descent  by  a  curving  flight  takes  one  a  story 
lower  and  into  an  irregular  shaped  room  19  ft.  where 
longest  and  10  where  narrowest  that  is  brightly  Ht  with 
electric  light,  and  the  ceiling  of  which,  somewhat  rounded, 
is  about  6y2  feet  high. 

Over  a  small  table  or  altar  is  a  relief  in  bright  brass 
representing  Paul  and  Peter  chained  to  the  wall,  one  with 
raised  hand,  and  the  other  baptizing  the  jailor,  while, 
between  :them,  there  gushes,  almost  knee  high,  the  mi- 
raculous fountain  that  furnished  the  baptismal  water. 
The  fountain  is  represented  as  gushing  in  somewhat  the 
form  of  a  diminutive  sheaf  of  wheat. 

Just  at  the  left  of  the  altar  is  a  worn  stone  post  about 


60Q  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

3  feet  high,  surrounded  and  covered  with  an  iron  railing; 
this  post  is  Hke  the  one  in  the  Trappist  building  at  Tre 
Fontane.  Above  the  post  is  a  tablet  incised,  all  in  capi- 
tals, that  reads,  "Qvesta  €  la  colonna  dove  stando  legati 
SS  apostoli  Pietro  e  Paolo  convertirno  i  SS  martiri  Pro- 
cesso  e  Martiniano  custodi  delle  carceri  et  altri  XLVII 
alia  f ede  di  Cristo  quali  battezzorno  coll'  aqua  di  questo 
fonte  scaturita  miracolosamente." 

Two  feet  from  the  altar  is  the  Spring,  over  which  there 
is  a  circular  dome  two  feet  in  diameter  with  a  brass  cover. 
Raising  this  cover  there  appears  what  resembles  a  section 
of  earthenware  drain  pipe,  some  twelve  inches  in  diameter 
and  two  feet  deep. 

The  water  in  the  pipe  is  clear  and  about  twelve  inches 
deep ;  the  bottom  is  of  white,  well  worn,  smooth  pebbles, 
but  there  is  no  motion  in  the  water,  and,  although  it  is 
nearly  twenty  feet  below  the  level  of  the  Forum,  it  is  of  the 
temperature  of  the  water  in  two  marble  shells  on  the  en- 
trance floor,  while  the  water  in  the  Rome  hotels  and  foun- 
tains is  quite  cold.  The  ceiling  and  walls  of  this  cell  are 
of  good  sized  stone  blocks,  as  are  those  of  the  room  above. 

Opposite  the  altar  is  a  low,  rusted  iron  door  that  cannot 
be  moved;  this  door  is  the  only  visible  outlet  for  water, 
and  as  its  sill  is  several  inches  high,  the  baptismal  party 
must  have  been  ankle  deep  in  water  unless  a  miraculous 
exit  was  furnished  together  with  the  Spring.  It  should  be 
recalled,  however,  that  during  the  Middle  Ages  the  Forum 
became  buried  in  rubbish,  so  that  the  ancient  pavement 
is  at  places  40  feet  below  the  present  level  of  the  ground. 

The  iron  door  is  said  to  open  into  a  240  foot  long  pas- 
sage that  was  discovered  in  1872  to  lead  to  the  Lautumiae, 
"the  quarries,"  the  designation  of  an  ancient  piison  cut 
out  of  rock,  and  which  when  discovered  formed  the  cellars 
of  houses  in  the  Via  Marforio. 


LATIUM  6oi 

As  there  is  no  outlet  for  the  water,  even  if  it  needed  one, 
and  as  it  is  perfectly  motionless,  glass  clear,  and  without 
sediment  or  any  sign  of  stagnation,  it  would  seem  that  it  is 
kept  constantly  supplied  with  fresh  fluid,  and  attended  to 
as  carefully  as  its  enemy  element  used  to  be  by  the  pagan 
Vestal  Virgins  who  fed  fuel  to  their  ever  burning  fire  on 
the  altar  that  stood  a  few  hundred  feet  away,  at  the  other 
side  of  the  Forum. 

In  the  wall  near  the  top  of  the  winding  stairway  to  the 
cell  may  be  seen  an  impression  like  a  rough  mold  of  a  fat 
cheeked  face  four  inches  across ;  it  is  said  to  be  an  intaglio 
of  the  side  face  of  the  Saint  in  one  of  the  stones  which 
softened  sympathetically  and  received  the  impression 
when,  upon  a  certain  day,  he  rested  his  weary  head 
against  it  for  a  moment,  and  then  resumed  his  way,  per- 
haps to  the  cross  upon  which  he  was  fastened  inverted,  at, 
as  some  say,  his  own  request,  because  in  his  humiHty  he 
did  not  deem  himself  worthy  to  assume  the  position  of  his 
crucified  Master,  His  wife  was  crucified  with  him,  but  there 
is  no  record  of  her  humility  or  of  how  far  she  was  guided 
by  the  example  of  her  husband — the  first  of  the  Popes. 

Over  this  impression  is  a  little  iron  grating  to  protect  it, 
and  a  metalHc  inscription  recording  the  miracle  and 
vouching  for  the  identity  of  the  stone. 

In  this  dungeon  today,  Ht  with  the  latest  patent  of 
electric  lights,  scrupulously  clean,  and  looking  with  its 
fittings  like  a  comfortable  little  chapel,  one  needs  to  re- 
call the  description  that  Sallust  has  left  of  this  cell  in 
order  to  apprehend  adequately  the  total  darkness,  the 
disgusting  filth  and  the  nauseating  odor  that  made  it, 
prior  to  Peter's  time,  the  most  horrible  place  of  confine- 
ment in  Rome;  so  horrible  that  some  have  imagined  that 
its  abominations  drove  the  Saint  to  try  to  dash  his  life 
out  on  the  stone  that  holds  the  hkeness  of  a  face. 


602  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

The  chains  with  which  the  Saint  was  shackled  are 
kept  in  the  church  of  San  Pietro  in  Vincoli,  a  few  hundred 
feet  distant  from  the  prison,  and  are  shown  to  the  public 
on  the  first  day  of  August. 


439 
St.  Paul's  Springs 

(Tre  Fontane) 

The  three  Springs  that  rose  at  the  head  of  St.  Paul 
originated  more  sensationally  than  the  single  one  that 
furnished  water  in  the  old  Roman  well-house  for  his 
brother-Apostle,  Peter;  and  their  first  appearance  was 
even  more  dramatic  than  that  of  Hippocrene,  the  Spring 
that  sprang  from  the  stroke  of  the  hoof  of  the  winged 
horse  Pegasus  on  Mt.  Helicon. 

While  every  surrounding  of  St.  Peter's  Spring  by  the 
Forum  is  charged  with  memories  and  remains  of  the 
glory  and  the  grandeur  of  Rome,  the  locale  of  the  foun- 
tains of  St.  Paul,  some  four  miles  away,  is  devoid  of  all 
interest  save  that  which  is  furnished  by  the  fountains 
themselves. 

The  way  to  them,  after  leaving  the  brownish  green 
Tiber,  leads  through  the  Via  Marmorata  and  a  region  of 
junkshops,  low  saloons,  flourmills,  soap  factories,  found- 
ries, and  metal-works;  it  dips  under  the  stone  arch  of  a 
steam  railway's  bed,  passes  a  modern  gasometer,  and  runs 
into  the  Via  Ostiensi,  which,  beyond  San  Paolo  where  is  a 
basilica  of  the  Apostle,  becomes  a  road  that  is  lined  on 
both  sides  with  eucalyptus  trees.  These  trees  in  their 
winter  bareness,  are  hardly  less  depressing  than  the 
junkshops,  for  they  recall  that  the  Abbadia  delle  Tre 
Fontane,  to  which  they  lead,  having  become  a  prey  to 


LATIUM  603 

malaria  was  in  consequence  abandoned  until,  in  1868,  it 
came  into  the  hands  of  French  Trappists  who  brought 
about  a  semblance  of  sanitary  conditions,  through  drain- 
age and  the  planting  of  these  same  dreary  looking  trees 
along  the  road,  and  in  the  grounds  where  is  located  the 
building  marking  the  site  of  St.  Paul's  martyrdom,  by 
decapitation. 

This  building  is  a  twenty  minute  drive  from  San  Paolo, 
and  bears  on  its  front  the  inscription; — "  S.  Pauli  Apostoli 
martyrii  locus  ubi  Tres  Pontes  Mirabilitur  eruperunt, " 
in  allusion  to  the  legend  that  where  the  Apostle's  severed 
head  first  touched  the  ground  a  blood-warm  fountain 
gushed  up,  and  that  in  two  other  places  that  the  head 
bounded  to,  before  coming  to  rest,  two  more  fountains 
appeared,  the  second  one  tepid,  and  the  third  cooler. 
In  the  course  of  time  the  Springs  seem  to  have  lost  these 
variations,  for  Romans,  of  the  present  generation,  who 
visited  the  fountains  before  they  were  covered  up,  were 
unable  to  detect  any  difference  in  the  temperatures  of  the 
three  waters. 

The  enti  ance  to  the  rectangular  building,  erected  over 
the  Springs,  is  through  one  of  its  long  sides,  and  against 
the  opposite  wall  are  three  altais.  In  the  stone  floor  in 
front  of  each  altar  is  a  grating  covering  a  Spring.  These 
gratings  are  about  ten  feet  apart,  and  at  about  the  same 
distance  to  the  right  of  the  first  grating  is  a  small  stone 
post;  it  stands  in  the  corner  of  the  room  and  is  enclosed 
by  a  high  railing,  and  it  presumably  marks  the  spot  where 
St.  Paul  stood  at  the  fatal  moment,  on  the  20th  of  June, 
68  A.D. 

The  third  Spring  is  thus  some  thirty  feet  from  the  post, 
so  that  the  blow  must  have  been  delivered  with  consider- 
able energy,  and  with  a  peculiar  force  that  made  the  head 
travel  the  same  distance  at  each  bound. 


604  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

There  is  at  present  no  sound  of  water,  nor  any  evidence 
of  it  in  this  room,  and  the  explanation  is,  as  given  by  the 
monks,  that  during  an  outbreak  of  sickness  that  occurred 
about  the  year  1910  it  was  deemed  best  to  seal  up  the 
Springs  by  flagging  them  over.  In  the  grounds,  some 
two  hundred  yards  away,  there  is  a  fountain  with  a  large 
basin,  and,  nearby,  on  a  sidepath,  the  water  of  a  Spring 
issues  from  a  pipe. 

Why  these  ordinary,  secular  waters  should  remain 
exposed  without  fear  of  sickness,  while  the  holy  Springs 
were  mistrusted,  the  monks  would  no  doubt  be  able  to 
explain,  if  they  were  not  more  particularly  interested  in 
selHng  pictures  and  sacred  wares  from  a  long  row  of  show- 
cases in  a  stone-flagged  store  near  the  spring-room. 

Formerly  they  sold  wine  as  well  as  the  sacred  wares 
in  which  they  still  deal;  it  was  credited  with  the  power 
of  awakening  the  faithless  to  belief  in  the  miracle  at 
Cana;  and  the  beverage  that  was  later  on  manufactured 
in  its  stead  was  locally  supposed  to  possess  such  acute 
apprehension  that  it  could  reveal  even  the  mystery  of 
what  became  of  the  foliage  of  the  leafless  eucalyptus 
trees. 

In  the  room  of  the  three  altars  is  a  small  wooden  table, 
and  two  low  cane-seated  wooden  chairs;  and  in  the  wall 
above  them  is  a  tablet  reading; — 

"Si^ge 

de  la 
confri^rie 

de 
Saint  Paul 

ap6tre 

pour  le 
conversion 

des 
p^cheurs." 


LATIUM  605 

On  the  wall  just  within  the  entrance  door  are  two  small 
marble  sculptures;  the  one  on  the  right  representing  the 
crucifixion  of  St.  Peter  head  down;  and  the  one  on  the 
left  the  scene  at  the  moment  St.  Paul  was  about  to  be 
beheaded. 

A  large  rectangle  of  the  pavement  in  the  center  of  the 
building  is  enclosed  with  a  chain,  and  the  immediate  in- 
ference might  be  that  the  remains  of  the  Saint  repose 
beneath  the  stones  of  the  enclosure;  the  body,  however, 
is  said  to  be  preserved  in  a  much  grander  building,  the 
Basilica  of  St.  Paul,  while  the  head  rests  with  that  of  St. 
Peter  in  the  Lateran. 

Returning  from  the  Abbey  one  passes,  when  near  the 
Porta  San  Paolo  and  the  crossing  of  the  Civita  Vecchia 
Railway,  a  small  chapel  that  marks  the  place  where 
Peter  and  Paul  had  their  last  meeting,  and  a  tablet  afSxed 
to  it  represents  pictorially  their  parting.  Twenty 
minutes  later  the  visitor  comes  again  into  an  atmosphere 
more  congenial  than  that  where  the  neighborhood  is 
charged  with  memories  of  a  bloody  beheading,  and  mer- 
cenary monks,  and  malaria. 


440 
The  Spring  of  the  Virgin 

There  are  no  religious  associations  connected  with  this 
Spring,  and  it  was  probably  called  as  it  is  because  the 
name  of  the  virgin  to  whom  its  designation  was  due  was 
unknown.  She  was  only  a  little  Italian  girl  who  did  a 
deed  of  ordinary  kindness  more  than  twenty  centuries 
ago;  but  as  long  as  the  Spring  continues  to  flow  that  only 
known  incident,  in  all  her  life,  will  continue  to  be  read  in 
the  water  as  clearly  as  though  the  record  had  been  written 
in  brass. 


6o6  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

A  body  of  Roman  soldiers  had  become  exhausted 
during  a  summer  march  and  craving  water  to  quench 
their  thirst  were  unable  to  find  it  until  this  little  maid, 
who  happened  to  pass  their  halting  place,  discovered 
their  plight  and  furnished  succor  by  showing  them  where 
this  clear  and  very  cold  Spring  lay  concealed,  in  an  out 
of  the  way  place  known  only  to  the  few  neighboring 
herders  of  sheep. 

And  the  soldiers  in  gratitude  called  it  The  Spring  of  the 
Virgin. 

Its  source  lay  far  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  town, 
and  towards  Praeneste,  but  an  aqueduct  was  made, 
mostly  underground,  through  which  its  waters  were 
brought  into  the  city  for  use  in  the  baths  of  Marcus 
Agrippa. 

Later,  the  waters  again  sought  concealment  and  for  a 
long  time  were  lost  somewhere  in  their  subterranean 
channel,  until  Nicholas  V.  recovered  them  and  recon- 
ducted them  to  the  city  where  now  they  are  not  only 
allaying  Roman  thirst,  as  in  the  long-ago  days  of  their 
military  finders,  but  are  gushing  out  copiously  in  the 
extensive  and  impressive  fountain  of  Trevi,  and  in  a 
dozen  more  of  the  many  fountains  for  which  Rome  has 
always  been  famous;  Pliny  counted  105  of  them  in  his 
time,  and  today  there  is  no  city  in  the  world  that  pos- 
sesses more  beautifully  ornamented  and  striking  jets 
of  water  in  its  streets  and  avenues. 

The  old  aqueduct  which,  with  others,  was  ruined  in 
the  sixth  century,  and  some  remains  of  which  have  been 
found  imderground  near  the  church  of  St.  Ignatius,  was 
repaired  and  now  carries  the  only  old-time  water  that 
flows  into  the  town,  the  water  of  the  little  Virgin's  Spring, 
whose  quality,  unstaled  by  age,  compares  favorably  with 
supplies  that  the  city  receives  through  newer  channels. 


LATIUM  €07 

There  is  a  superstitious  belief  that  one  may  assure  his 
return  to  Rome  by  drinking  of  this  Spring's  waters  at  its 
city  fountain  of  Trevi,  provided  always  that  the  draught 
is  taken  when  the  moon  is  at  its  full,  and  that  a  piece  of 
money  is  thrown  into  the  depths  at  the  foot  of  its  spread- 
ing cascade;  and  this  belief  is  sedulously  and  confidently 
fostered  by  those  who  have  charge  of  the  fountain,  for 
they  themselves  have  had  many  repeated  and  convinc- 
ing proofs  that,  when  the  formula  is  followed  out  strictly 
to  the  end,  the  waters  may  be  relied  upon  to  insure  most 
pleasing  returns. 

Pliny  says  that  the  waters  of  this  Spring  were  brought 
from  the  bye-road  at  the  eighth  milestone  from  the  city 
along  the  Prasnestine  Way,  and  that  near  them  was  the 
Stream  of  Hercules  which  the  former  shunned  to  all 
appearances,  from  which  circumstance  they  obtained 
the  name  of  Virgin  Waters. 

He  adds,  and  it  may  throw  some  light  on  the  "conceal- 
ment ' '  of  the  waters  before  referred  to,  that  for  a  long 
time  past  the  pleasure  of  drinking  these  waters  has  been 
lost  to  the  city,  owing  to  the  ambition  and  avarice  of 
certain  persons  who  have  turned  them  out  of  their  course 
for  the  supply  of  their  country  seats  and  of  various 
places  in  the  suburbs,  to  the  great  detriment  of  the 
pubHc  health. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  25. 


441 

Egeria 

One  of  the  Springs  that  flowed  into  the  Lake  in  the 
Grove  of  Diana  near  the  city  of  Aricia  was  denominated 
Egeria  after  Numa's  divinity.     When  referring  to  it, 


6o8  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

Ovid  says; — "A  Nymph  and  wife  of  Numa  was  wont  to 
minister  to  the  grove  and  the  Lake  of  Diana.  The  lake 
is  in  the  Valley  of  Aricia  enclosed  by  a  dark  wood  sancti- 
fied by  ancient  religious  awe;  here  lies  concealed  Hip- 
polytus  torn  asunder  by  the  madness  of  his  steeds,  for 
which  reason  that  grove  is  entered  by  no  horses. 

"There  the  threads  hang  down  veiling  the  long  hedge 
rows,  and  many  a  tablet  has  been  placed  to  the  goddess 
found  to  be  deserving  of  it.  Ofttimes,  the  woman  hav- 
ing gotten  her  wish,  her  forehead  wreathed  with  chaplets, 
bears  thither  from  the  city  the  blazing  torches. 

"With  indistinct  murmur  gUdes  a  pebbly  stream;  oft- 
times,  but  in  scanty  draughts,  have  I  drunk  thence;  it  is 
Egeria  who  supplies  the  water ;  a  goddess  pleasing  to  the 
Muses;  she  was  the  wife  and  the  counsellor  of  Numa." 

The  legend  recounts  that  upon  the  demise  of  Numa  the 
Nymph  left  the  city  and  went  to  the  vale  of  Aricia,  and 
became  hysterically  inconsolable;  her  lamentations  re- 
sounded continually  through  the  woods  to  the  great  dis- 
turbance of  the  other  Nymphs,  and  even  Diana  herself. 

Their  most  delicate  sympathy  having  failed  to  relieve 
her  grief,  Virbius  endeavored  to  divert  her  mind  with 
tales  of  previous  sorrows,  and  bade  her  in  brusque 
language,  almost  the  counterpart  of  some  modern  argot, 
to  "Put  an  end  to  it,  and  consider  the  like  calamities  of 
others," — particularly  his  own. 

But  neither  condolences,  nor  the  relation  of  the  mis- 
fortunes of  others,  were  able  to  mitigate  her  repining, 
and,  throwing  herself  down  at  the  base  of  the  hill,  she 
dissolved  into  tears,  until  Diana,  moved  by  her  affection, 
formed  a  cool  fountain  from  her  body  and  dissolved  her 
limbs  in  ever  flowing  waters. 

The  proof  of  this  story  is  no  less  indubitable  than  that 
furnished  by  Jack  Cade's  brick,  for  the  people,  on  going 


LATIUM  609 

into  the  grove  after  Numa's  death,  could  find  no  trace  of 
Egeria — but  only  this  fountain,  the  clear  evidence  of  her 
transformation. 

Still,  notwithstanding  this,  St.  Augustine  believed  in 
an  earlier  and  more  natural  origin  for  the  Spring,  and 
thought  that  Numa  used  its  waters  in  his  divinations  by 
hydromancy  near  the  temple  of  Hippolytus. 

The  Spring  of  this  stream  was  near  the  Aricia  at 
which  Horace  was  wont  to  stop  on  his  journeys  to  Brun- 
dusium.  It  is  now  called  Fonte  Gerulo  and  its  water  was 
said  to  rush  forth  in  such  a  powerful  and  impetuous  tor- 
rent that  it  immediately  turned  mills,  a  change  one  would 
hardly  credit  in  Ovid's  pebbly  stream  flowing  with  an 
indistinct  murmur  and  furnishing  but  scanty  draughts. 

Aricia  was  twenty  miles  from  Rome  on  the  Appian 
Way.  Beyond  it  was  the  Grove  of  Diana,  and  a 
temple,  consecrated  to  Diana  Taurica,  where  barba- 
rous rites  were  practised ;  the  temple  and  the  Lake  were 
in  a  grove  in  a  deep  ravine,  the  grove  being  called  Ar- 
temisium  and  Nemus.  The  Lake  is  still  considered  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  of  the  Italian  lakes,  and  the  town 
of  Nemi  on  its  eastern  shore  is  the  descendant  of  the 
ancient  Nemus.     (See  No.  434.) 

Ovid;  Meta.  XV.  In  478-553. 
Strabo;  V.  3.  $  12. 
Ovid:  Fasti;  III.  In  264. 

442 

Albunea 

The  Spring  of  Albunea  was  buried  in  gloom  and 
exhaled  a  noisome  stench.  Below  it  was  the  Oracle  of 
Faunus  and  a  temple  of  Albunea,  one  of  the  ten  sibyls 
whose  prophecies  were  carefully  preserved  in  the  Roman 
Capitol  until  400  a.  d.,  and  were  consulted  on  all  mo- 


6io  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

mentous  occasions,  in  the  confident  belief  that  they 
would  provide  proper  counsel  for  the  contingency. 

When  i^neas  reached  Italy  after  his  flight  from  Troy, 
Albunea  heartened  him  with  her  predictions  of  the  great 
city  with  which  his  descendants  would  cover  the  seven 
grassy  hills  that  were  then  the  grazing  ground  of  cattle. 
That  she  was  living  many  centuries  later  when  the 
Romans  in  the  end  bought  from  her  one  book  of  prophe- 
cies, at  the  price  they  refused,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
negotiations,  to  pay  for  a  number  of  volumes,  is  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  she  had  taken  advantage  of 
Apollo's  affection  for  her  to  secure  from  him  as  many 
years  of  life  as  there  were  particles  in  a  handful  of  dust 
which  she  picked  up.  The  dust  particles  were  equal  to 
seven  ages  and  three  hundred  harvests,  and  all  of  them 
beyond  the  usual  term  of  life  were  embittered  by  shrivel- 
ing age  and  decrepitude,  as  it  had  not  occurred  to 
Albunea  at  the  proper  time  to  ask  that  the  attributes  of 
youth  should  continue  as  long  as  the  years. 

The  Spring  is  now  called  Albulae  Aquae  because  of  its 
white  waters  which  were  formerly  carried  even  to  Rome 
for  their  curative  properties,  the  noisome  stench  being 
an  unduly  strong  expression  for  the  odor  of  sulphur  with 
which  they  were  impregnated. 

The  remains  of  the  Sibyl's  temple  may  still  be  seen  six- 
teen miles  from  Rome  near  Tivoli  on  the  banks  of  the  Anio. 

.(Eneid;  VII.  In  83. 


443 

FONTE    BeLLO 

On  one  of  Horace's  properties,  near  Rome,  there  was  a 
Spring  that  helped  to  swell  the  stream  of  a  little  river 
which  he  calls  the  Digentia. 


LATIUM  6ii 

The  poet  was  personally  indebted  to  the  fountain  for 
other  effects,  as  he  frankly  acknowledged  when  praising 
it  in  one  of  his  Epistles,  to  which  fuller  reference  is  made 
in  alluding  to  another  of  Horace's  Springs,  that  of 
Bandusia,  No.  459. 

Horace;  Epistles  I.  i6.  i8. 


444 

SiNUESSA 

The  warm  Springs  of  Sinuessa  were  the  most  popular 
curative  waters  among  the  Romans,  until  the  growth  of 
gay  life  around  the  thermal  Springs  of  Baiae  offered 
greater  social  attractions. 

The  waters  were  of  a  relaxing  nature,  and  their  bene- 
ficial effects  covered  a  wide  field,  ranging  from  the  cure  of 
insanity  in  men  to  the  increase  of  progeny  among  women. 
Their  neighborhood  abounded  in  snow-white  snakes; 
and  one  of  the  Governors  of  the  district  was  said  to  have 
been  born  with  grey  hair,  and  with  all  of  the  sagacity  it 
is  supposed  in  maturer  years  to  indicate.  His  name  was 
Tarcon. 

Sinuessa  was  the  last  town  in  Latium  near  the  border 
of  Campania,  and  on  the  Via  Appia  where  that  road  left 
the  seacoast  at  the  Sinus  (whence  Sinuessa)  or  Gulf  of 
Gaeta  in  the  Tyrrhenian  Sea,  which  was  named  after  one 
of  the  descendants  of  Hercules  and  Omphale  who 
colonized  the  places  about  its  shores.  Horace  describes 
a  visit  to  Sinuessa,  on  one  of  his  trips  to  Brundusium 
when  he  had  a  very  affectionate  meeting  with  Virgil,  and 
received  fuel  and  salt  from  the  public  officers,  who  were 
required  by  law  to  furnish  those  necessities  to  travelers. 

The  ruins  of  the  town  are  now  seen  just  at  the  foot  of 


6i2  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

the  Hill  of  Mondragone,  and  the  Springs,  which  were 
also  known  as  the  Aquae  Sinuessae,  are  at  present  called 
I  Bagni. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  4- 
Horace;  I.  Satire  5. 
Martial;  VI.  42. 

445 
Pliny's  Laurentian  Springs 

The  younger  Pliny's  Laurentian  villa  was  on  the  sea- 
shore, some  seventeen  miles  from  Rome,  where  forests  of 
bay  trees,  lauri,  had  suggested  Laurentum  as  the  name 
of  the  place  long  before  .^neas  landed  in  the  neighbor- 
hood and  met  Latinus,  who  was  then  king  of  the  sur- 
rounding country. 

Here,  where  ^neas  wooed  and  won  Lavinia,  the 
daughter  of  the  king,  the  healthful  and  pleasant  odor  of 
the  bays,  and  the  mildening  influence  of  the  salty  air  on 
the  snow-nipped  winds  from  the  Alban  hills,  in  the  course 
of  time  drew  together  a  winter  colony  of  Rome's  best 
society,  who  dotted  the  shore  with  sumptuous  private 
villas. 

Pliny's  villa  was  supplied  with  water  from  Springs  on 
higher  ground  some  distance  away,  but  no  attempt  was 
made  to  use  the  water  for  fountains  and  streams  as  was 
done  so  effectively  in  his  summer  villa  in  Tuscany.  It 
was  used  only  in  a  spacious  bathroom  that  had  swim- 
ming pools  at  each  end;  and  in  another  pool  that  was 
heated  by  steam  pipes. 

Besides,  PUny  here  at  the  seashore  was  at  the  edge  of 
the  Mother  of  all  Springs,  in  contrast  with  which  the 
others  are  puny  and  insignificant,  and  minor  fountains 
would  have  offered  no  attraction. 

Mentally  he  saturated  himself  with  the  sea;  and  he 


LATIUM  613 

dined  in  it,  as  nearly  as  might  be,  for  his  banquet  room 
was  built  on  a  tongue  of  land  that  jutted  out  into  the 
ocean,  as  his  bedroom  at  Como  jutted  out  into  the  lake, 
so,  as  he  writes,  that  one  seems  to  see  three  oceans  from 
it,  and  on  windy  days  one  dined  to  the  music  of  the 
spray  that  dashed  against  the  glazed  windows  and  the 
wide  folding  doors. 

Pliny  (Younger)  Letters;  II.  17. 


446 

Laban^ 

The  Springs  of  Labanae  were  on  the  Via  Nomentana 
fourteen  miles  from  Rome;  they  were  cold  sulphureous 
waters,  and,  in  their  medicinal  qualities,  resembled  those 
of  Albula  near  by. 

Formerly  called  the  Aquae  Labanae,  they  are  now 
known  as  the  Bagni  di  Grotta  Marozza,  three  miles 
north  of  Mentana  the  ancient  town  of  Nomentum,  where 
Seneca  had  a  country  house  and  farm,  and  where  Martial 
lived,  next  to  a  temple  of  Flora. 

Martial  has  given  several  glimpses  of  his  country 
dinners  the  menus  for  which  form,  very  unconventionally, 
a  part  of  his  invitations,  so  that  the  guests  enjoyed  a 
double  pleasure,  in  having  something  on  which  they 
could  feast  their  eyes  in  accurate  anticipation. 

He  also  explains  that  he  lives  at  his  humble  domain 
because  there  is  no  place  in  Rome  where  a  poor  man  can 
either  think  or  sleep;  he  enumerates  some  of  the  sources 
of  the  city  noises,  unknowing  what  he  escaped  in  the 
racket  of  elevated  railways  and  flat  wheel  surface  cars, 
and  the  automobile  with  its  heart-scaring  horn.  There 
were  the  dronings  from  the  schools  in  the  morning,  and 


614  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

the  rumble  of  the  corn  grinders'  mills  at  night,  while  the 
hammers  of  the  braziers,  not  then  unionized,  kept  up 
their  metallic  clanging  both  day  and  night. 

The  money  changers  rattled  their  piles  of  Nero's  rough 
coins  on  their  dirty  counters  to  attract  attention,  and 
beaters  of  Spanish  gold  belabored  their  stones  with 
resounding  wooden  mallets. 

Rollicking  soldiers  clamored  in  their  swaggering  way; 
and  shipwrecked  sailors  cried  aloud  to  gain  pity  for 
their  destitution,  and  banged  together  such  pieces  of 
the  wreck  as  they  carried  slung  across  their  shoulders  to 
testify  to  the  truth  of  their  noisy  tales. 

Jew  boy-beggars  monotonously  whined  their  miseries, 
and  the  hawker  of  matches  had  a  cry  that  made  his 
presence  known  to  the  people  in  the  topmost  stories. 

For  the  dinner,  seven  guests  are  invited  to  come  at 
two  o'clock.  The  opening  course,  whets  to  the  appetite, 
consists  of  Mallows;  Lettuces  and  sliced  Leeks;  Mint 
and  Elecampane;  Anchovies  dressed  with  Rue  and 
crowned  with  slices  of  eggs;  and  Sow's  teats  swimming 
in  Tunny  sauce. 

The  entrees  are  a  Kid  with  Tid  bits  that  need  no 
carver;  Haricot  Beans;  and  young  Cabbage  Sprouts. 

For  the  roast,  there  is  a  chicken;  and  a  cold  Ham  which 
the  host  frankly  admits  has  already  appeared  at  table 
three  times. 

Ripe  Fruits  are  served  for  dessert,  together  with  a 
flagon  of  Nomentum  wine  some  ten  years  old. 

Even  the  accessories  of  the  dinner  are  named  in  the 
invitation,  which  states  that  the  conversation  will  be 
seasoned  with  pleasantry  free  from  bitterness;  that 
nothing  will  be  said  that  will  bring  regret  on  the  morrow; 
and  that  criticism  of  people  will  be  confined  to  opinions 
about  the  rival  factions  among  the  charioteers  of  the 


LATIUM  615 

circus.  And  a  promise  is  made,  on  the  part  of  the  host, 
that  neither  the  strength  nor  the  quantity  of  the  wine 
will  tend  to  induce  the  guests'  tongues  to  trench  upon 
tabooed  topics. 

Another  dinner  is  varied  with  the  addition  of  Eggs 
slightly  poached;  Cheese  hardened  on  a  Velabrian 
hearth;  and  Olives  not  plucked  till  touched  by  the  cold 
of  winter. 

Oysters,  too,  were  added;  and  a  Fish  course;  and  a 
course  of  Wild  Game;  and  on  this  occasion  there  was 
no  cold  shank  of  an  overworked  Ham.  One  would  hardly 
imagine  that  this  was  a  dinner  given  to  one  guest  only, 
but  such  was  the  case,  and  he  was  a  poet  named  Julius 
Cerealis  whom  Martial  advised  in  advance  that  he  would 
not  read  any  of  his  verses  to,  and  that  he  would  gladly 
listen  to  those  of  his  friend. 

It  is  much  to  be  doubted  whether,  after  all  that, 
Cerealis  could  have  balked  at  accommodating,  just  till 
the  publishers  rendered  their  next  account. 

For  another  dinner,  given  to  three,  there  is  mentioned 
Cauliflower,  hot  enough  to  burn  your  fingers;  and 
Sausages  floating  on  snow-white  Porridge;  and  Pale 
Beans  served  with  red  streaked  Bacon. 

For  that  dinner's  dessert  there  were  ripe  Raisins;  and 
Pears  that  throw  a  homelike  light  on  the  fruit  trade,  be- 
cause described  as  ' '  such  as  pass  for  Syrian ' ' ;  these  were 
accompanied  with  Chestnuts  from  Naples  that  were 
roasted  at  a  slow  fire.  During  this  dinner  a  small  reed 
pipe  was  to  be  heard. 

All  of  the  dinners  were  prefaced  with  warm  baths, 
which  were  taken  in  the  house  of  a  nearby  neighbor 
named  Stephanus. 

Strabo;  V.  3.     §  11. 

Martial;  XII.  57.     XI.  52.     V.  78. 


6i6  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

447 
The  Golden  Water 

At  Tibur,  twenty  miles  from  Rome,  there  was  a  beau- 
tiful, clear  Spring  called  The  Golden  Water,  so  popular 
that  the  appellation  was  applied  to  all  of  the  surrounding 
district. 

The  place  was  founded  by  Tibertus,  a  son  of  the  Seer 
Amphiaraus,  in  the  century  before  the  Trojan  war,  on  the 
site  of  a  settlement  that  was  older  still.  Its  quarries 
furnished  the  Travertino  stone  with  which  the  two  largest 
buildings  in  the  world  were  made,  St.  Peter's  and  the 
Colosseum. 

Pliny  the  Younger  mentions  his  having  a  villa  at  Tibur, 
but  he  has  left  no  description  of  the  fountains  that  it 
doubtless  contained,  for  the  numerous  villas  of  the  neigh- 
borhood were  abundantly  supplied  with  water,  not  only 
from  the  Spring,  but,  from  the  river  Anio  which  was 
tapped  by  an  aqueduct  built  for  their  owners'  especial  ac- 
commodation. 

Neither  is  there  any  mention  of  the  fountains  in 
Pliny's  villas  at  Praeneste,  the  modern  Palestrina,  twenty- 
three  miles  east  of  Rome,  and  at  Tusculum,  twelve  and 
one  half  miles  from  Rome. 

Smith's  Die.  of  Gk.  &  Ro.  Geo.     "Tibur." 


448 

The  Neptunian  Spring 

The  Neptunian  Spring  was  a  fountain,  at  Tarracina, 
that  caused  the  death  of  those  who  thoughtlessly  drank  of 
it,  for  which  reason  the  ancients  are  said  to  have  stopped 
it  up. 

Tarracina  is  about  sixty  miles  south  of  Rome,  on  the 


LATIUM  617 

Via  Appia  where  it  first  touches  the  sea,  the  nearness  of 
which  doubtless  had  something  to  do  with  the  name  of 
the  fountain  the  ancients,  as  an  ancient  writer  calls  them, 
filled  up. 

To  the  moderns,  of  two  thousand  years  ago,  Tarracina 
was  famous  for  a  salubrious  fountain  that  drew  to  the 
place  villa  owners,  among  whom  were  the  Emperor  Domi- 
tian,  and  the  parents  of  the  Emperor  Galba  who  was 
born  there. 

The  name  of  this  latter  fountain  was  Feronia.  (See 
No.  449.) 

Vitruvius;  VIII.  3. 


449 
Feronia 

The  fountain  Feronia,  white  with  health-giving  waters, 
was  named  after  a  Sabine  divinity  to  whom  its  siirround- 
ing  grove  was  dedicated,  and  to  whom  a  temple  was 
erected,  which  became  an  object  of  special  veneration  to 
freedmen  and  freed  women. 

In  the  temple  there  was  a  stone  seat,  and  a  slave  could 
secure  liberty  by  occupying  it. 

As  there  is  no  mention  of  any  sudden  and  large  de- 
crease in  the  number  of  slaves  in  Italy  in  the  time  of  the 
temple's  prestige,  there  were  doubtless  some  hard  and 
fast  conditions  to  be  fulfilled  before  those  to  whom  bond- 
age was  galling  could  take  a  seat  upon  the  stone  and 
obtain  their  manumission;  but  unfortunately  no  writer 
has  thrown  any  light  on  the  subject  to  make  clear  to  the 
curious  what  method  of  procedure  was  required. 

Tarracina  lay  on  the  route  that  Horace  used  to  take 
on  his  trips  to  Brundusium,  and  he  wrote  an  entertaining 
account  of  the  incidents  connected  with  that  part  of  the 


6i8  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

journey  which,  possibly  from  motives  of  economy,  he 
made  through  a  canal  that  left  the  Appian  Way  at  Forum 
Appii  and,  passing  through  the  Pomptine  Marshes,  re- 
joined it  at  Tarracina. 

The  canal  boat,  drawn  by  a  mule,  made  the  passage 
during  the  night,  and  the  incidents  were  all  concentrated 
within  the  long  drawn  out  time  occupied  in  getting  under 
way. 

The  irritating  slowness  of  the  stevedores,  in  putting 
the  cargo  aboard,  led  to  an  interchange  of  curses  between 
them  and  the  passengers'  servants  which,  alone,  would 
have  put  out  of  the  question  any  chance  of  shortening  the 
time  with  a  nap,  even  if  dozing  had  not  been  made  im- 
possible by  the  nagging  of  the  gnats  of  the  Marshes  and 
the  noise  of  the  frogs  in  the  fens;  in  addition  to  which 
there  were  the  songs  of  a  passenger  and  the  mule  driver, 
who  vied  with  each  other  in  chanting  the  praises  of  their 
lady  loves  until,  under  the  action  of  plentiful  draughts 
of  thick  wine,  they  were  drugged  to  sleep,  during  which 
they  substituted  for  their  songs  an  even  more  intolerable 
duet  of  snoring. 

After  waiting  until  nearly  daybreak  without  seeing  any 
signs  of  starting,  an  over-choleric  passenger  then  leaped 
out  of  the  boat,  and,  by  indiscriminately  drubbing  with 
a  willow  cudgel  both  the  driver  and  his  mule,  which  had 
been  tethered  to  a  stone  in  the  starlight  to  graze  for  his 
supper,  a  start  was  at  last  effected.  Thus,  perforce,  it  was 
well  on  towards  noon  of  the  following  morning  before  the 
eighteen-mile  trip  was  completed  and  the  canal  boat 
reached  Tarracina  where,  after  draughts  of  the  fountain's 
holy  water,  and  a  traveler's  meal,  the  journey  by  the  land 
route  was  resumed,  and,  three  miles  farther  on,  reached 
Anxur,  a  name  that  the  poets  sometimes  use  for  Feronia 
when  it  suits  their  meter  better. 


LATIUM  619 

The  site  of  the  sanctuary  is  pointed  out  on  the  Appian 
Way,  58  miles  from  Rome,  at  a  place  now  called  Torre  di 
Tarracina,  where  a  beautiful  and  abundant  source  of 
limpid  water  breaks  out  at  the  foot  of  one  of  the  hills 
that  hem  in  the  Pomptine  Marshes,  and  where  the  re- 
mains of  a  temple  are  still  visible. 

In  Etruria  there  was  another  fountain  called  Feronia 
which  was  connected  with  a  temple  of  times  still  more 
ancient,  and  in  which  prodigies  were  performed. 

Horace;  I.  Satire  5.     Livy;  XXII.  I. 


Ghost  Laying  Springs 

There  were  three  nights  in  the  year  when  Springs  were 
used  in  the  ceremony  of  driving  away  the  Roman  family 
ghost.  The  ceremony  was  as  old  as  the  city  itself,  having 
been  ordained  by  Romulus,  upon  complaint  of  his  foster 
parents  that  they  were  terrified  by  the  appearance  of  the 
bloody  ghost  of  Remus  who  visited  their  bedside,  and 
gibbered  about  his  murder  and  about  his  wrongs. 

The  ceremony  was  called  the  Remuria  from  Remus* 
name ;  afterwards,  for  the  sake  of  euphony,  the  name  was 
changed  to  Lemuria,  and  spoken  of  as  the  Feast  of  the 
Lemures,  the  ghosts  themselves  being  called  Lemures. 

The  nights  of  May  9th,  nth  and  13th  were  designated 
for  the  rite,  which  began  at  midnight  when  one  of  the 
family,  making  a  noise  with  his  hands  to  frighten  the 
Spirit,  proceeded  barefooted  to  the  Spring  and,  having 
washed  his  hands  with  its  water,  threw  nine  black  beans 
behind  him,  saying  at  each  throw,  "With  these  I  ransom 
myself  and  mine." 

Then  washing  his  hands  again  with  the  Spring's  water, 
and  making  additional  noises  with  the  brass  basin,  he 


620  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

repeated  nine  times,  "Shades  of  my  Father,  depart,"  it 
being  understood  that  by  this  time  the  ghost  should  have 
picked  up  the  feast  of  beans  and  departed  as  bidden. 

It  is  not  stated  which  one  of  the  Springs  of  Rome  was 
used  in  the  first  performance  of  these  rites,  but  doubtless 
in  the  course  of  time  there  were  few  Italian  Springs  that 
had  not  been  called  into  requisition,  according  to  the 
ritual,  to  free  some  premises  of  the  ghost  of  a  being  who 
had  met  with  the  sad  fate  of  Remus. 

Ovid;  Fasti;  V.  In  435. 


CAMPANIA 

451 
Bai^ 

The  Springs  of  Baiae  appear  to  have  been  first  known 
to  the  ailing,  and  those  who  in  search  of  health  found, 
among  its  numerous  fountains  with  their  diverse  ingre- 
dients and  temperatures,  reliefs  or  remedies  for  many 
bodily  troubles. 

Rising  within  sight  of  each  other  were  Springs  of  vari- 
ous natures,  some  containing  sulphur,  some  alum,  and 
others  of  an  acid  character. 

The  neighborhood  abounded  in  beautiful  locations  for 
outing  residences,  and,  in  the  course  of  time,  wealthy 
idlers  and  luxurious  pleasure  seekers  built  villas  on  those 
charming  locations,  along  the  coast  an  hour's  ride  west  of 
Naples;  and  then,  for  centuries,  life  about  the  Springs  of 
Baise  moved  in  that  eccentric  round  of  opposite  purposes 
that  seems  to  become  its  natural  orbit  in  most  of  the 
world's  gay  watering  places,  where  a  part  of  the  visitors 
are  feverishly  seeking  a  respite  from  sickness  in  draughts 
and  baths,  while  others,  without  maladies,  are  plunging 
into  every  variety  of  dissipation  and  depravity  that 
conduce  to  the  destruction  of  health  and  sow  the  seeds  of 
disease. 

The  Springs  were  on  the  southwest  coast  of  Campania 
between  Puteoli  and  Picenum,  and  the  place  was  sup- 
posed to  have  derived  its  name  from  one  of  Ulysses'  com- 
panions, Baius,  who  was  there  bvuied. 

621 


622  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

The  Springs  are  mentioned  by  Livy  in  connection  with 
events  in  B.C.  176,  when  they  were  called  Aquae  Cumanae, 
and  they  and  their  baths  continued  in  popular  use  for 
some  700  years  thereafter. 

The  neighborhood  now  contains  little  but  fragmentary 
ruins  of  small  interest,  and  the  Springs  have  lost  favor, 
fickle  Fashion  having  found  other  fountains  in  new 
fields  for  its  amusement. 

Ovid;  Meta.  XV.  In  713. 


The  Posidian  Springs 

The  Posidian  Springs  were  at  Baiae;  their  waters  were 
so  hot  as  to  cook  articles  of  food. 

They  were  named  after  a  freedman,  of  the  Emperor 
Claudius,  Posides.  Pausanias  calls  them  the  waters  of 
Dicaearchia,  and  says  they  were  so  hot  that  in  a  few  years 
they  melted  the  lead  pipes  through  which  they  flowed 
to  the  baths  in  which  they  were  used  at  Puteoli. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  2.     Pausanias  IV.  35- 


453 
Cicero's  Water 

The  spectacular  advent  of  Cicero's  Water,  and  its 
magical  power  of  healing,  should  entitle  it  to  a  place 
among  the  miraculous  Springs,  and  to  a  niche  in  some 
future  hall  of  famous  fountains. 

The  kindly  intent  of  the  sponsors  makes  ample  amends 
for  the  inaccuracy  conveyed  in  the  name,  as  the  Spring 
did  not  come  into  existence  until  after  the  orator's  head 


CAMPANIA  623 

and  hands  had  been  cut  off  in  the  year  43  B.C.,  when  it 
burst  out  suddenly  near  the  entrance  to  one  of  his  villas 
that  he  had  called  Academia,  in  veneration  of  Plato. 

This  villa,  in  the  suburbs  of  Naples,  lay  on  the  seashore 
between  Lake  Avernus  and  Puteoli,  and  was  celebrated 
for  its  portico  and  grove,  as  well  as  for  being  the  place 
where  Cicero  composed  his  work  entitled  Academica  and 
modeled  on  the  Dialogues  of  Plato. 

The  grounds  became  the  property  of  their  previous 
■owner's  friend  Antistius  Vetus,  and  he,  the  first  proprietor 
■of  the  Spring,  may  almost  be  sensed  as  a  contemporary  of 
today  and  as  the  presiding  genius  of  the  present  work 
■of  the  Swiss  engineers  in  rendering  the  river  Rhone 
■navigable  throughout  its  entire  course,  a  work  that  was 
iDegun  nineteen  centuries  ago  by  one  of  Vetus'  family 
who,  while  in  command  of  a  Roman  army  in  Germany, 
-conceived  the  project  of  connecting  the  northern  ocean 
with  the  Mediterranean  through  the  Rhone,  and  then 
Icept  his  soldiers  busy  at  it  between  battles. 

The  new  Spring  proved  to  be  remarkably  effective  in 
the  treatment  of  eye  troubles,  and  quickly  acquired  great 
popularity  on  that  account.  With  what  acclamations  any 
remedy  like  clean  water  was  received  by  people,  who 
needed  an  eyewash  in  those  times,  can  best  be  appre- 
ciated by  reading  the  recipes  of  their  medical  men  and 
magicians  for  compounding  specifics  of  ineffable  putridi- 
ties, not  alone  for  outward  application  but  even  for  use 
internally,  though  many  of  them  seem  better  adapted 
for  producing  intestinal  troubles  than  for  improving  the 
eyesight ;  a  few  of  the  least  obnoxious  of  the  prescriptions 
are; — Wearing  a  snake's  right  eye  as  an  amulet.  Carry- 
ing about  a  dragon's  head.  A  diet  of  immature  storks. 
A  mash  made  of  long-legged  spiders.  The  gall  of  par- 
tridges. 


624  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

Powders  compounded  of  vipers'  ashes.  A  liniment  of 
boiled  hawks.  Salves  made  of  horned  owls'  eyes  reduced 
to  ashes,  and  of  vipers  that  had  become  more  than  gaiheyi 

The  foregoing  were  some  of  the  remedies  for  which 
sufferers  could  substitute  the  waters  of  Cicero. 

Laurea  Tullius,  one  of  Cicero's  former  freedmen,  wrote 
a  poem  describing  the  Spring's  sudden  birth  and  its 
virtues;  and  the  prevalence  of  eye  troubles  at  that  time 
may  be  inferred  from  its  concluding  line; — "May  eyes 
unnumbered  by  these  streams  be  healed." 

Pliny;  N.  Hist.  XXXI.  3.     XXIX.  38. 


454 
Salmacis 

Martial  mentions  a  fountain  of  Salmacis  as  one  of  the 
Springs  that  fed  the  Lucrine  Lake. 

Martial;  X.  30. 


455 
Araxus 

The  Springs  of  Araxus  issued  from  the  declivities  of  the 
hill  called  Leucogaeum  from  its  white  color ;  they  were  at 
Pozzuoli,  a  few  miles  beyond  the  Posilipo  hill  of  Virgil's 
tomb  on  the  outskirts  of  Naples. 

They  were  also  called  Pontes  Leucogaei,  and  are 
thought  to  be  the  Springs  now  known  as  the  Pisciarelli. 

The  waters  of  the  Spring  were  peculiarly  efficacious  for 
strengthening  the  sight,  healing  wounds,  and  for  prevent- 
ing the  teeth  from  becoming  loose. 

The  hill  itself  produced  a  chalky  substance  which  was  a 
necessary  ingredient  in  making,  from  seed  wheat,  a  most 


CAMPANIA  625 

delightful  food,  a  kind  of  pottage,  called  alica;  and  the 
city  of  Neapolis  received  annually  a  sum  of  20,000  ses- 
terces for  the  substance  that  was  taken  from  the  hill  to 
make  the  dainty. 

Pliny;  XVIII.  29. 

456 

ACIDULA 

The  waters  of  the  cold  Spring  of  Acidula  were  a  cure 
for  calculi. 

The  Spring  was  four  miles  from  the  most  populous 
town  on  the  Via  Latina,  Teanum,  now  represented  by 
Teano  where  there  are  several  mineral  Springs  known  as 
Le  Calderelle,  instead  of  as  formerly,  Aquae  Acidulae. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  S- 


457 
Well  of  Acerra 

"Mayst  thou  die  like  those  whom  the  Punic  general 
drowned  in  the  waters  of  the  well,  and  made  the  stream 
white  with  the  dust  thrown  in." 

Those  words  form  a  mild  part  of  the  curse  that  Ovid 
pronounced  upon  some  unknown  person  designated  as 
Ibis  and  who  had  defamed  him  and  his  wife  while  he  was 
in  banishment;  for  at  the  age  of  51  Augustus  banished 
him  to  Tomi,  now  Tomisvar,  on  the  confines  of  civiliza- 
tion near  the  mouth  of  the  Danube. 

It  was  a  bleak  and  cheerless  place,  without  trees  and 
where  one  sluggish  winter  was  always  joined  to  another 
It  was  subject  to  attacks  from  bandit  horsemen  whose 
viper-venomed  arrows  were  always  to  be  seen  protruding 
from  the  walls  of  the  houses,  so  that  Ovid  described  his 


626  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

life  as  a  struggle  against  cold  and  arrows.  It  was  more- 
over associated  with  Medea's  cold-blooded  murder  of  her 
brother  by  chopping  him  to  pieces. 

There,  after  years  of  ineffectual  effort  to  secure  his 
recall,  he  died  and  was  buried  at  the  age  of  60,  and  with- 
out ever  revealing  the  real  reason  of  his  banishment,  al- 
though its  ostensible  cause  was  the  publication  of  his. 
book  on  The  Art  of  Love. 

It  was  during  the  last  nine  years  of  his  life  at  Tomi  that 
Ovid  wiote  the  terrible  anathema  which  Southey  perhaps- 
had  in  mind  when  he  penned  The  Curse  of  Kehama,  and 
which  is  a  condensed  summary  of  nearly  all  horrible 
happenings  and  deaths  that  had  been  described  either  as- 
facts  or  as  fancies;  and  the  fate  of  those  who  were 
drowned  in  the  Well  of  Acerra  was  one  in  the  long  list  of 
pains  and  tortures  that  he  desired  for  Ibis. 

The  Punic  general  was  Hannibal  who,  in  216  B.C., 
during  the  second  Punic  war  that  he  waged  for  fifteen. 
years  in  Italy,  having  gotten  the  members  of  the  senate 
into  his  power,  threw  them  into  the  Well  of  Acerra,  and 
made  sure  of  their  deaths  by  crushing  them  down  with 
rocks. 

Hannibal's  act,  at  the  Well  of  Acerra,  seems  to  be 
better  attested  than  the  account  of  the  stratagem  by^ 
which  he  won  a  naval  victory  over  Eumenes,  whose 
sailors  and  marines  he  is  said  to  have  destroyed  by  throw- 
ing into  their  ships  vessels  filled  with  poisonous  snakes. 
Though  this  account  is  regarded  with  suspicion,  no  one 
has  questioned  the  statement  that  Hannibal  poisoned 
himself  to  escape  capture  by  the  Romans  to  whom  his. 
existence,  although  he  was  then  65  years  old  and  an  exile, 
was  a  constant  source  of  uneasiness. 

The  city  of  Acerra  was  abandoned  and  plundered  and. 
burned,  and  there  are  no  remains  of  it;  but  a  modern. 


CAMPANIA  627 

Acerra  occupies  its  site  which  was  some  eight  miles  north 
east  of  Naples. 

Ovid;    Invective  (Ibis). 


The  Fountain  of  Sarnus 
The  fountain  of  Sarnus  rose  near  the  town  of  Nuceria, 
at  the  foot  of  the  Apennine  mountain  of  the  same  name 
as  the  Spring  which  was  one  of  the  chief  sources  of  the 
Sarnus,  a  placid  and  sluggish  river  that  flowed  under  the 
eastern  wall  of  Pompeii,  and  emptied  into  the  bay  of 
Naples  nine  miles  from  Nuceria. 

At  present,  the  river  reaches  the  bay  two  miles  east  of 
its  former  mouth,  a  change  no  doubt  due  to  some  divert- 
ing obstruction  raised  by  Vesuvius,  either  in  63  a.d.  when 
Pompeii  was  partly  wrecked  by  the  volcano,  or,  16  years 
later,  when  the  city  was  so  completely  covered  with 
cinders  that,  during  a  thousand  years,  its  location  in  the 
ashheap  was  unknown. 

Epidious  Nuncionus,  a  rural  divinity,  presided  over  the 
Spring  and  was  worshipped  on  the  banks  of  the  river. 
There  was  a  legend  that,  as  a  man,  he  fell  into  the  foun- 
tain, and,  not  being  afterwards  found,  was  reckoned 
among  the  number  of  the  gods. 

C.  Epidius,  a  Roman  rhetorician  who  was  one  of  Mark 
Antony's  teachers,  is  said  by  Suetonius  to  have  claimed 
descent  from  the  deity  of  the  Spring;  and  Pliny  reports 
that  Epidius  also  professed  to  believe  that  trees  could 
talk  when  occasion  arose  to  communicate  with  mortals. 

The  river  was  called  Draco  by  Procopius,  and  it  is  now 
known  as  the  Sarno. 

Suetonius;  Lives  of  Rhetoricians;  IV. 
Pliny;  XVII.  38. 


APULIA 

459 
Bandusia 

Horace  addressed  his  thirteenth  ode  to  this  Spring; — 

"O,  thou  fountain  of  Bandusia,  clearer  than  glass, 
worth}^  of  delicious  wine,  not  unadorned  by  flowers;  to- 
morrow thou  shalt  be  presented  with  a  kid,  whose  fore- 
head, pouting  with  new  horns,  determines  upon  both 
love  and  war  in  vain;  for  this  offspring  of  the  wanton 
flock  shall  tinge  thy  cooling  streams  with  scarlet  blood. 

"The  severe  season  of  the  burning  dog  star  cannot 
reach  thee;  thou  affordest  a  refreshing  coolness  to  the 
oxen  fatigued  with  the  ploughshare,  and  to  the  ranging 
flock. 

"Thou,  also,  shalt  become  one  of  the  famous  fountains, 
through  my  celebrating  the  oak  that  covers  the  hollow 
rocks  whence  thy  prattling  rills  descend  with  a  bound." 

The  reference  to  flowers  may  indicate  either  that  a 
flower  bed  had  been  laid  out  about  the  Spring,  or  that, 
following  custom,  there  had  been  placed  round  the  Spring 
glasses  crowned  with  flowers,  perhaps  intended  to  make 
a  draught  more  attractive  to  the  divinity. 

This  Spring  was  six  miles  south  of  Venusia,  a  town  in 
the  southern  part  of  Italy,  on  the  Appian  Way,  where 
Horace  was  born  on  the  eighth  of  December,  65  B.C.  His 
father,  a  freedman,  owned  a  lean  farm,  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, which  he  left  to  his  son,  who  pleasantly  tells  how  he 

628 


APULIA  629 

used  to  journey  to  it  on  a  bob-tailed  mule,  until  the  land 
was  lost  through  confiscation. 

The  Spring  appears  under  its  old  name  in  a  church 
record  as  late  as  the  12th  century;  but  it  is  now  known  as 
Fontane  Grande,  which,  as  the  name  indicates,  still 
furnishes  an  abundant  supply  of  water. 

Northeast  of  Bandusia  lay  the  Field  of  Blood,  near 
Cannae  where  Hannibal  fought  his  great  battle  with  the 
Romans  on  the  second  of  August,  216  B.C.,  when,  placing 
his  troops  with  their  backs  to  the  Sirocco,  he  advanced  to 
victory  behind  a  barrage  of  sand-laden  wind  that  was  as 
discomforting  to  his  foes  as  the  mustard  gas  of  modern 
warfields. 

Horace  was  indebted  to  Maecenas  for  another  piece  of 
land,  his  Sabine  Farm  near  Varia  about  21  miles  north- 
west of  Rome,  on  the  banks  of  a  little  river  which  he  calls 
the  Digentia.  On  this  farm  in  a  shady  valley  and  near 
his  villa,  there  was  a  Spring  of  cold  and  clear  water,  and, 
from  what  he  says  in  his  praise  of  it,  one  can  imagine 
that  often  after  an  evening's  fun  with  flowing  flagons  of 
Falernian,  or  a  hard  night's  work  over  the  construction  of 
a  poem,  for  which  words  were  sought,  according  to  his 
admitted  custom,  in  generous  and  mellow  wine,  his 
throbbing  head  had  enjoyed  the  relief  of  its  cooling 
waters.  He  describes  it  in  a  letter  to  one  of  his  friends  as 
a  fountain  deserving  to  give  name  to  a  river;  cool  and 
limpid,  and  flowing  salubrious  to  the  infirm  head.  This 
Spring  is  now  known  as  Fonte  Bello,  and  contributes  a 
considerable  stream  to  Horace's  river  Digentia  which,  as 
the  Licenza,  finds  its  way  through  the  Anio  into  the 
Tiber. 


Horace;  Odes;  III.  13. 

Epistles;  I.  16.     I.  15. 
Satires;  I.  6. 


CALABRIA 

460 
Brundusium 

There  was  a  Spring  in  the  harbor  of  Brundusium  that 
yielded  water  that  never  became  putrid  at  sea.  This  was 
a  most  excellent  location  for  such  a  Spring,  as  the  port, 
now  Brindisi,  whose  stag-head  outline  suggested  its  name, 
was  the  Roman  side  of  the  short  ferry  over  which  nearly 
all  traffic  to  Greece  and  the  East  was  conveyed. 

Horace  gives  an  enjoyable  account  of  the  inns  and  other 
annoyances  that  travelers  had  to  encounter  on  the  road 
from  Rome  to  Brundusium,  where  his  friend  Virgil  died 
on  his  way  back  from  Greece. 

Phalanthus,  too,  died  in  Brundusium  which  erected 
a  monument  to  him  and  seems  to  have  accorded  him 
more  honor  than  his  own  subjects  who  deprived  him  of 
his  city,  as  he  had  deprived  its  founders  (See  No.  216). 
Indeed,  in  spite  of  the  healthy  quality  of  the  Harbor 
Spring,  Caesar  complained  of  the  unhealthiness  of  the 
place  and  the  constant  sickness  of  the  soldiers  who  were 
encamped  in  its  neighborhood. 

Pliny;  II.  io6. 
Horace;    Satires;  I.  5. 


630 


PELIGNI 

461 
The  Marcian  Spring 

Pliny  wrote  that ; — the  most  celebi  ated  water  through- 
out the  whole  world,  and  the  one  to  which  Rome  gives 
the  palm  for  coolness  and  salubrity,  is  that  of  the  Marcian 
Spring,  accorded  to  Rome  among  the  other  bounties  of 
the  gods :  the  name  formerly  given  to  the  stream  was  the 
"  Aufeian,"  the  Spring  itself  being  known  as  "Pitonia." 

It  rises  at  the  extremity  of  the  mountains  of  the  Peligni, 
passes  through  the  tenitory  of  the  Marsi  and  through 
Lake  Fucinus,  and  then,  without  deviating,  makes 
directly  for  Rome;  shortly  after  this,  it  loses  itself  in 
certain  caverns,  and  only  reappears  in  the  territory  of 
Tibur,  from  which  it  is  brought  to  the  city  by  an  arched 
aqueduct  nine  miles  in  length. 

Ancus  Marcius,  one  of  the  Roman  kings,  was  the  first 
who  thought  of  introducing  this  water  into  the  city.  At  a 
later  period  the  aqueduct  was  built  by  Quintus  Marcius 
Rex,  the  praetor,  and  remodeled  more  recently  by  the 
praetor  M.  Agrippa. 

Ancus  Marcius  was  the  fourth  king  of  Rome,  and  his 
reign  of  some  twenty-four  years  closed  in  614  B.C.;  ob- 
jection has  therefore  been  taken  to  Pliny's  coupling  so 
ancient  a  monarch  with  the  Aqua  Marcia  aqueduct;  but, 
as  Ancus  Marcius  founded  towns,  constructed  fortresses 
and  bridges,  and  built  a  prison,  it  is  not  improbable  that 
he  "first  thought  of"  leading  the  Marcian  Spring  to 
Rome,  and  that  from  him  the  Spiing  derived  its  name, 

631 


632  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

which  appropriately  descended  to  the  aqueduct  when  it 
was  built  some  centuries  later  by  the  praetor  Q.  Marcius 
Rex,  as  Pliny  distinctly  states. 

Ovid's  native  and  much  praised  country,  that  of  the 
Peligni  just  north  of  the  boundary  line  of  Latium,  and  the 
birthplace  of  the  Spring,  is  called  the  coldest  in  Italy, 
its  mountains  reach  the  greatest  height  of  all  the  Apen- 
nines, over  9,000  feet,  and  they  feed  their  numerous 
Springs  with  constant  snows.  The  Marcian  water  at 
Rome  is  notable  for  its  coldness,  much  of  its  initial  tem- 
perature being  no  doubt  preserved  by  the  shading  it 
receives  from  two  aqueduct  streams,  the  Julia's  and  the 
Tepula's,  that  flow  over  it  as  it  enters  the  city. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  24.     XXXVI.  24. 
Ovid;  Fasti;  IV.  In  685. 


462 

Ovid's  Spring 

Ovid,  who  lived  some  two  miles  from  Sulmo,  where  he 
was  born  on  the  20th  of  March  in  the  year  43  B.C.,  pleas- 
antly describes  the  neighborhood  as  a  little  spot  but 
salubrious  with  flowing  streams  that  traverse  the  fields, 
and  trickle  among  the  short  blades  of  the  grassy  turf  that 
covers  the  moistened  ground;  and  quite  probably  he  drew 
the  picture  of  the  Spring  on  his  own  estate  when  telling 
of  the  one  shaded  by  ancient  trees,  under  which  he  was  at 
the  moment  walking  while  casting  about  in  his  mind  for  a 
subject  for  his  next  poem.  This  was,  he  says,  where  there 
stands  an  ancient  grove,  and  one  uncut  for  many  years; 
'tis  worthy  of  belief  that  a  deity  inhabits  the  spot.  In 
the  midst  there  is  a  holy  Spring  and  a  grotto  arched  with 
pumice;  and  on  every  side  the  birds  pour  forth  their  sweet 
complaint. 


PELIGNI  633 

It  was  during  his  meditation  here  that  Erato  the  Muse 
of  Elegy,  with  wreathed  and  perfumed  hair  appeared,  to 
him,  followed  immediately  afterwards  by  Calliope  the 
Muse  of  Ruthless  Tragedy,  who  strode  up  with  scowling 
brow,  and  began  at  once  to  object  to  his  light  composi- 
tions and  his  use  of  elegiac  verse  to  the  exclusion  of  her 
more  ponderous  form ;  and  she  demanded  that  he  devote 
himself  to  Roman  tragedy,  and  write  in  heroic  verse. 

The  Muse  of  Elegy,  with  a  merry  twinkle  in  her  eyes, 
interrupts  to  point  out  that  Tragedy  has  all  the  while 
been  inveighing  against  Ovid's  light  verse  in  that  very 
verse  itself !  And  before  Tragedy  recovers  from  her  con- 
fusion at  having  been  caught  in  making  such  a  laughable 
slip,  the  poet  succeeds  in  pacifying  both  the  Muses  by 
promising  to  make  use  of  the  versification  of  each  of  his 
visitors. 

Possibly  this  Spring  was  the  Fountain  of  Love  at  the 
foot  of  the  Maronian  Hill  near  Sulmona,  90  miles  from 
Rome,  where  some  ruins  are  pointed  out  as  those  of 
Ovid's  house. 

Ovid;  Amours;  II  .    Elegy  I..  II.  16. 


SABINI 

463 
Albula 

The  waters  of  Albula  sprang  from  numerous  fountains. 
They  were  cold,  and  a  cure  for  various  diseases.  They 
were  used  both  internally  and  externally,  and  were  of 
the  same  character  as  the  neighboring  Springs  of  Labanae 
near  Eretum  on  the  Via  Nomentana. 

The  Albulc'E  Aquae  or  Solfatara,  a  sulphur  lake  in  La- 
tium  near  Tibur  (Tivoli),  was  several  miles  from  the 
Sabine  Springs  of  Albula  with  which  they  seem  to  have 
been  confounded  by  one  of  Strabo's  translators;  Albula, 
although  the  same  distance  of  18  miles  from  Rome  was 
more  north  of  it  than  Tibur ;  it  was  near  the  Tiber  and  on 
the  Via  Salabria  where  it  joined  the  Via  Nomentana. 

The  Eretum  of  the  Springs'  neighborhood  was  the 
place  where  Hannibal  in  his  retreat  from  Rome  turned 
off  to  go  to  the  Spring  of  Feronia  and  pillage  its  temple. 
Eretum,  being  practically  on  the  boundary  line  where 
Latium,  Etruria  and  the  Sabine  territory  came  together, 
was  often  overrun  by  contending  troops,  and  there  is 
absolutely  nothing  left  of  it  to  mark  its  site  except  its 
sulphureous  Springs. 

Strabo;  V.  3.    5  11. 

464 

Neminia 

In  the  valley  of  Reate,  some  48  miles  from  Rome, 
there  was  a  Spring  called  Neminia  which  rose  up  some- 

634 


SABINI  635 

times  in  one  place  and  sometimes  in  another,  and  in  that 
way  indicated  a  change  in  the  produce  of  the  earth. 

This  peculiar  statement  of  Plin^^'s  may  have  some 
reference  to  the  Spring  called  the  Fonte  Velino  rising  in 
Falacrinum,  where  a  church  now  bears  the  name  of  Sta. 
Maria  di  Fonte  Velino.  The  stream  from  that  fountain 
made  such  large  deposits  of  travertine  that  its  course  was 
frequently  shifted,  thereby  rendering  cultivated  lands 
useless  through  inundations. 

Pliny;  II.  106. 


465 

COTYLI^ 

The  cold  waters  of  the  Springs  at  Cotylias  were  used 
for  the  cure  of  various  maladies,  and  were  prescribed  for 
patients  both  as  draughts  and  as  baths. 

Cotyliae  was  in  the  country  of  the  Sabines  which  was  a 
narrow  strip  of  territory  with  a  length  of  125  miles  that 
extended,  from  the  River  Tiber  and  the  town  of  Momen- 
tum, north  and  east  to  the  district  of  the  Vestini.  It 
appears  to  have  escaped  notice  by  anyone  in  recent  times, 
and  the  original  reference  to  it  gives  no  indication  of  its 
precise  location  in  the  Sabines'  small  domain. 

Strabo;  V.  3.  §  i. 


ETRURIA 

466 
Pliny's  Tuscan  Fountains 

The  Tuscan  villa  of  Pliny  the  Younger,  was  one  of  his 
summer  residences,  about  150  miles  from  Rome,  by  the 
road.  It  lay  under  the  Apennines  in  an  amphitheater 
ringed  with  hills,  and  well  nourished  with  never  failing 
streams  that  found  their  way  into  the  Tiber,  which  ran 
through  the  middle  of  the  plain. 

The  house,  which  faced  the  south,  had  a  broad  and 
long  portico  containing  a  number  of  bedrooms  and  an 
old-fashioned  hall.  In  front  there  was  a  terrace,  bounded 
with  an  edging  of  box  cut  in  the  shape  of  animals. 

At  the  head  of  the  portico,  a  dining  room  jutted  out 
and  gave  views  on  three  sides,  from  which  could  be  seen 
not  only  the  beauties  of  the  surrounding  country  but  also 
a  part  of  the  villa  itself. 

Opposite  the  middle  of  the  portico  stood  a  small 
summer-house  shaded  by  four  plane  trees,  among  which 
was  a  marble  fountain  whose  waters  sprinkled  the  roots 
of  the  trees  and  the  grass  about  them.  In  this  small 
house  there  was  an  interior  bedroom,  from  which  all 
light,  noise  and  sound  was  excluded,  and  a  dining  room 
facing  a  small  court. 

A  second  sleeping  room,  facing  the  plane  trees  and 
shaded  by  one  of  them,  contained  a  fountain  with  a  basin 
around  it,  into  which  the  water  flowed  with  a  most  agree- 
able and  lulling  sound. 

636 


ETRURIA  637 

Another,  a  spacious  sleeping  chamber,  faced  a  fish 
pond,  which,  lying  just  beneath  its  windows,  was  pleasing 
both  to  the  eye  and  to  the  ear,  as  water  falling  into  it 
from  a  considerable  height  glistened  white  as  it  was 
caught  in  the  marble  basin. 

There  was  a  large,  shaded,  cold  swimming  bath;  and 
one  of  warm  water;  and  a  third  which  the  sun  shone  on 
and  made  of  medium  temperature. 

In  the  spacious  grounds  there  were  flower  gardens  and 
fruit  trees  and  box  shrubs,  the  latter  cut  in  the  shape  of 
letters  that  formed  Pliny's  name  and  that  of  his  gardener. 
At  the  end  of  one  of  the  walks,  in  a  secluded  place,  there 
was  a  semicircular  marble  dining  couch  built  around  a 
graceful  marble  basin.  It  was  canopied  with  shady  vines 
and  supported  by  small  pillars  of  Carystian  marble. 
From  small  pipes  running  through  the  couch,  jets  of 
water  flowed  into  the  basin,  seemingly  pressed  out  by  the 
weight  of  the  diners.  The  heavier  dishes  for  the  repasts 
were  placed  on  the  margin  of  the  basin,  while  the  lighter 
dishes,  in  the  forms  of  boats  and  birds,  floated  on  the 
surface  of  the  water  in  revolutions  that  brought  them 
successively  within  reach  of  the  diners  as  they  were 
required. 

A  fountain  facing  the  feasters  threw  into  the  air  a 
stream  that  flared  outwards  and  dropped  with  musical 
splashings  into  a  basin  of  its  own.  A  jet  from  another 
fountain  a  little  distance  away  fell  noiselessly  and  dis- 
appeared in  the  ground. 

Set  along  another  path  were  resting  chairs  of  marble, 
with  a  fountain  at  each  chair,  and  the  streams  from  them 
ran  murmuring  through  the  grounds  in  numerous 
channels,  so  directed  as  to  furnish  water  wherever  it  was 
needed  for  the  growing  vegetation. 

The  Tuscan  villa  was  near  the  village  of  Tifernum  in 


638  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

Umbria,  and  its  approximate  site  is  inferred  to  be  about 
ten  miles  from,  and  northwest  of  the  present  Citta  di 
Castello. 

Pliny  (Younger)  Letters;  V.  6.    X.  9. 

467 

Aqvje  Tauri 

The  Springs  called  Aquae  Tauri  were  discovered  by  a 
bull  who  was  duly  honored  in  naming  them  when  they 
were  found  to  possess  qualities  that  made  them  favorites 
with  those  for  whom  warm  baths  were  prescribed.  Even 
when  as  a  bathing  resort  their  locality  was  called  Aquae 
Thermae,  the  discriminating  bull  was  pleasantly  re- 
membered by  the  place's  patrons  who  preferred  the  old 
to  the  new  designation. 

They  were  three  miles  from  Civita  Vecchia,  and  are 
now  named  Bagni  di  Ferrata. 

Pliny;  N.  Hist.  III.  8. 

468 

Pisa 

Frogs  were  produced  in  the  warm  Springs  of  Pisa, 
named  after  the  Spring  in  EHs. 

These  Springs  now  called  the  Bagni  di  S.  Giuliano  are 
about  four  miles  from  Pisa  at  the  foot  of  a  detached  group 
of  the  Apennines. 

The  town  was  said  to  have  been  founded  by  people  who 
migrated  from  the  Spring  of  Pisa  in  Grecian  Elis. 

The  old  city  was  at  the  junction  of  the  Arnus  and  Auser 
rivers  and  was  less  than  three  miles  from  the  sea,  but  the 
present  town,  though  on  the  site  of  the  old  one,  is  more 
than  six  miles  from  the  ocean;  the  busy  rivers  have  de- 


ETRURIA  639 

posited  the  intervening  land,  and  have  also  built  up  a 
wall  between  themselves  so  that  they  no  longer  join  but 
run  to  the  sea  through  separate  channels. 

Pisa  is  known  of  more  generally  than  other  minor 
ItaHan  towns  because  of  its  leaning  tower,  a  seven-story 
round  marble  belfry  that  slants  fourteen  feet  from  a 
straight  line  in  its  height  of  sixty  yards. 

The  city  has  a  curious  cemetery  some  of  the  graves  in 
which  aie  made  of  imported  earth,  soil  from  Jerusalem 
having  been  procured  as  far  back  as  1228  a.d. 

The  Springs,  which  are  of  a  mineral  character,  are  now 
more  noted  for  reheving  rheumatism  and  other  ailments 
than  for  the  production  of  frogs. 

Pliny;  II.  io6. 

469 

Vetulonia 

Fish  were  produced  in  the  warm  Springs  of  Vetulonia, 
which  were  not  far  from  the  sea. 

The  Romans  copied  from  the  Vetulonians  their  insignia 
of  magistracy,  the  fasces,  the  lictors,  the  toga  praetexta, 
and  others;  but  the  city  was  destroyed,  and  was  ignored 
by  history  for  so  many  ages  that  its  location  was  long 
sought  for  in  vain.  Continued  search,  however,  resulted 
in  its  discovery  in  1842  near  the  village  of  Magliano  ten 
miles  north  of  Orbetello,  250  yards  from  the  sea  coast, 
and  with  its  Springs  still  warm. 

Pliny;  II.  I06. 

CiERETANA 

The  Hot  Springs  of  Caeretana  were  a  short  distance 
from  the  city  of  Caere,  and  they  were  resorted  to  by  so 


640  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

many  people  in  search  of  health  that  a  lusty  settlement 
grew  up  around  them  which  in  time  became  larger  than 
the  city,  and  supplanted  it. 

At  Caere  there  was  an  oracle  where  omens  were  secured 
by  consulting  pieces  of  wood  bearing  antique  characters, 
called  Sortes  or  Lots,  and  the  Spring  may  at  one  time 
have  had  a  part  in  the  ceremonies. 

The  first  town  was  of  great  antiquity,  having  been 
founded  by  Pelasgians,  and  among  inscriptions  that  have 
been  discovered  in  the  ruins  are  some  that  are  supposed 
to  be  in  the  forgotten  language  of  that  puzzling  people, 
whose  origin  remains  as  much  a  mystery  as  it  was  to  the 
ancients  themselves. 

The  successors  of  the  Pelasgians  called  the  settlement 
Agylla,  and  its  subsequent  name  Caere  was  the  result  of 
an  unusual  incident,  of  warfare,  that  occurred  when  a 
marauding  party  of  Tyrrhenians  marched  up  to  the  walls 
in  the  early  part  of  a  day,  and  demanded  the  name  of  the 
town.  The  solitary  sentinel  to  whom  the  demand  was 
made,  ignoring  the  question,  saluted  and  politely  bade  the 
party  good  morning.  Regarding  the  unusual  salutation 
to  a  hostile  force  as  an  auspicious  omen,  the  assaulters, 
after  capturing  the  town,  adopted  the  sentinel's  word  for 
good  morning  as  the  name  of  their  new  possession. 

When  the  last  of  the  Roman  kings,  Tarquin,  was 
expelled  from  the  capital  city  in  510  B.C.  he  sought  refuge 
in  Caere;  and  when,  July,  390  B.C.,  the  Gauls  were  about 
to  capture  Rome,  the  most  precious  relics  of  the  capital, 
together  with  the  Vestals  and  their  fire,  were  sent  to  Caere 
for  preservation. 

The  city's  ruins  are  twenty-seven  miles  from  Rome, 
and  the  Springs  are  now  called  Bagni  di  Sasso. 

Strabo;  V.  2.  §  3. 

Livy;  XXI.  62.     XXII.  I. 


ETRURIA  641 


471 
Feronia 

This  fountain  of  Feronia  was  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Soracte, 
now  Mt.  S.  Oreste,  where  there  was  a  temple  dedicated 
to  the  Sabine  goddess  Feronia,  and  where  from  the  times 
of  Tullus  Hostihus,  who  was  the  third  king  of  Rome 
between  670  and  638  B.C.,  she  had  been  held  in  reverence. 

Tullus  Hostilius  instituted  new  religious  offices,  one  of 
which  was  an  annual  meeting  held  around  the  temple;  a 
meeting  of  a  double  nature  that  appealed  both  to  traders 
and  shoppers,  and  to  pious  devotees,  by  coupling  to- 
gether the  functions  of  a  campmeeting  and  a  county  fair; 
and  one  of  the  numerous  wars  of  the  king  was  started  on 
the  ground  that  the  Sabines  had  wronged  the  Roman 
merchants  at  the  temple  of  Feronia. 

In  the  temple  a  remarkable  ceremony  was  performed 
during  which  those  who  were  possessed  by  the  divinity, 
her  priests  and  her  votaries,  passed  barefooted  over  a 
large  bed  of  biirning  coals  and  hot  ashes  without  receiving 
any  hurt. 

This  performance  with  fire,  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Soracte, 
seems  to  have  been  a  modification  and  then  a  transfer- 
ence of  other  fire  rites  that  were  in  very  ancient  times 
conducted  at  the  summit  of  the  half  mile  high  mountain. 
Those  rites  weie  said  to  have  been  performed  for  Apollo, 
the  god  of  the  sun,  and  even  as  late  as  the  beginning  of 
the  Christian  Era  a  few  families  of  the  Hirpi  were  ex- 
empted by  the  senate  from  military  service  and  other 
public  duties,  because  they  conducted  an  annual  sacrifice 
to  Apollo  on  Mt.  Soracte,  during  which  they  walked  over 
a  burning  pile  of  wood  without  being  scorched. 

It  is  perhaps  not  improbable  that,  if  the  remote  origin 
of  those  rites  could  be  traced  back,  they  would  be  found 
41  641 


642  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

to  antedate  the  time  when  Apollo  became  known  to  the 
Romans,  and  to  have  been  instituted  by  fire  worshippers 
from  the  east  who  traveled  through  Thrace  and  down  into 
the  Italian  peninsula  to  become  the  ancestors  of  the  pre- 
Trojan  inhabitants,  among  whom  the  Etrurians  as  the 
Etruscans  of  Tuscany  are  the  most  interesting  of  all  the 
Roman  tribes  whose  problem  of  origin  is  still  unsolved. 

The  temple,  with  its  side  show  of  fire  walking,  and  with 
the  concessions  paid  by  the  traffickers,  amassed  great 
wealth,  some  of  it  being  in  the  form  of  masses  of  brass 
that  indicate  contributions  of  a  very  early  date.  The 
value  of  the  temple's  accumulations  was  such  that  Hanni- 
bal was  impelled  to  turn  aside  and  stop  in  his  retreat  from 
Rome  in  21 1  B.C.,  in  order  to  plunder  the  sanctuary,  from 
which  he  obtained  a  large  quantity  of  the  precious  metals, 
and  other  material  valuable  as  liquid  assets. 

The  fountain,  which  is  now  called  Felonica,  at  the  foot 
of  Mt.  S.  Oreste  is  supposed  to  mark  the  site  of  the  temple 
that  Hannibal  plundered. 

Another  fountain  on  Mt.  Soracte  was  noticed  by  Varro. 
It  was  a  fountain  that  seemed  to  feel,  and  even  express 
emotions. 

It  lay  peacefully,  in  a  basin  that  was  twelve  feet  in 
circumference,  until  the  sun  began  to  rise,  when  the 
waters,  as  if  conscious  of  its  returning  presence,  became 
violently  agitated,  leaping  and  tossing  as  though  they 
were  under  the  influence  of  some  delirious  joy,  or  were 
striving  to  mount  aloft  and  greet  the  orb  of  day  at  closer 
range. 

This  seeming  sympathy  of  the  Spring  with  the  sun  may 
have  aroused  the  wonder  and  interest  of  the  ancient  fire- 
worshippers,  and  impelled  them  to  regard  the  mountain 
with  reverence,  and  consecrate  it  to  the  purposes  of  their 
long  continued  religious  rites  in  the  neighborhood. 


ETRURIA  643 

There  is  no  record  of  the  effect  these  emotional  waters 
had  on  human  beings,  but  it  was  said  that  birds,  even 
though  they  took  only  a  single  sip,  fell  dead  at  the  foun- 
tain's brink. 

There  was  also,  in  Latium,  another  fountain  called 
Feronia. 

Strabo;  V.  2.  §  9. 

Pliny;  VII.  2.    XXXI.  19. 


472 

Aqu^  Apollinares 

Conjectures  are  not  in  accord  as  to  which  of  several 
Etrurian  Springs  represent  what  Martial  called  "those 
of  Apollo  at  Cuma." 

According  to  one,  they  were  the  Springs  described  as 
twelve  miles  from  Tarquinii  and  now  called  Bagni  di 
Stigliano;  according  to  another,  they  are  the  Springs  of 
Cseretana;  and  a  third  writer  fancies  that  they  were  the 
Aquae  Auraliae  of  the  Antonine  Itinerary  and  are  those 
that  were  found  in  1852  under  a  vault  of  Etruscan  work- 
manship near  Lake  Bracciano,  on  property  then  owned 
by  the  Odescalchi  family  near  the  little  settlement  of 
Vicarello. 

From  the  basin  of  the  latter  Springs  it  is  stated  that  a 
ton  of  coins  of  different  metals  was  retrieved,  the  position 
of  the  various  layers  indicating  the  dates  of  deposit, 
which  went  back  to  the  earliest  times  of  money,  and  was 
underlaid  with  votive  offerings  of  flint  implements.  Such 
offerings,  individually,  were  called  Stips,  meaning  gift, 
to  which  the  modern  Tips  bears  so  close  a  resemblance 
that  it  might  perhaps  lay  claim  to  lineal  descent. 

These  waters  possessed  medicinal  qualities,  and  the 
neighborhood  is  supposed  to  have  been  a  bathing  and 


644  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

health  resort  before  even  Rome  itself  was  established,  and 
to  have  been  patronized  down  to  the  time  of  Trajan, 
whose  effigy  was  impressed  on  some  of  the  coins  contained 
in  the  basin. 

Martial;  VI.  42. 


473 

AgUiE    P.\SSERIS 

The  Aquae  Passeris,  or  Aquae  Passerianae  as  it  was 
designated  in  an  inscription,  was  the  warm  Spring  that 
appears  in  Martial's  poetry  as  a  praiseworthy  fountain 
that  he  calls  "the  fervid  Passer." 

It  is  supposed  to  have  been  at  the  place  now  named 
Bacucco,  some  five  miles  north  of  Viterbo,  whose  neigh- 
borhood produces  a  number  of  thermal  Springs. 

Viterbo,  42  miles  N.  N.  W.  of  Rome,  has  numerous 
elegant  fountains  and  is  the  marble-paved  city  that  was 
the  scene  of  the  assassination  of  Prince  Henry  of  England, 
in  the  Xllth  centiu-y. 

Martial;  VI.  42- 


474 
Clusian  Springs 

The  Clusian  Springs  in  Etruria  were  near  the  city  of 
Clusium,  and  were  visited  by  such  hardy  invalids  as  had 
sufficient  courage  to  expose  themselves  to  their  curative 
cold  waters,  as  Horace  wrote  to  his  friend  Vala  when 
requesting  information  about  milder  places  in  which  to 
recuperate. 

The  city  was  a  hundred  miles  from  Rome,  in  the  valley 
of  the  River  Clanis,  and  the  sulphureous  waters  of  the 


ETRURIA  645 

Springs  formed  a  small  lake  now  called  Lago  di  Chiusi. 

The  settlement  antedated  Rome  by  an  unknown  num- 
ber of  centuries,  for,  even  in  the  early  days  of  -^neas, 
Clusium  and  its  neighboring  town  of  Cosa  furnished  a 
thousand  fighting  men  to  oppose  King  Turnus.  Virgil's 
list  of  the  forces  engaged  on  that  occasion,  and  the  names 
of  the  populous  places  from  which  they  were  drawn,  can- 
not be  read  without  a  saddening  regret  for  the  loss  of  the 
histories  of  millions  of  people  who  flourished  in  Etruria 
and  the  territories  around  it — long  before  the  founding  of 
Rome,  whose  own  inception  stretches  far  enough  back  to 
be  connected  with  many  more  or  less  mythful  relations. 

A  remarkable  structure,  300  feet  square  and  350  feet 
high,  was  said  to  have  been  built  over  a  labyrinth  as  the 
tomb  of  Lars  Porsenna,  one  of  the  later  kings  of  Clusium ; 
this  was  the  king  whose  army,  when  sent  against  Rome  in 
its  early  days,  was  held  back  single  handed  by  Horatius 
Codes  while  his  comrades  were  making  a  bridge  im- 
passable; an  act  that  preserved  the  fame  of  Horatius, 
although  it  failed  to  preserve  Rome  against  Porsenna's 
onslaught. 

Horace;  Epistles;  I.  15. 
iEneid;  X.  In  167. 


UMBRIA 

475 
Rubicon 

The  Rubicon  River  rose  from  a  small  Spring,  and  the 
ruddy  stones  abounding  in  its  bed  suggested  its  appro- 
priate name. 

In  summer  it  crept  along  with  humble  waves,  but  when 
swelled  by  winter  rains  it  became  a  torrent. 

When  Caesar  reached  its  banks  in  the  latter  part  of 
January,  a  three  days'  rain  had  swelled  the  stream  to  its 
winter  size,  but  by  placing  his  cavalry  obliquely  across 
the  current  a  dam  was  formed  behind  which  the  infantry 
waded  through  in  comparatively  quiet  water. 

The  act  of  crossing  required  more  moral  than  physical 
courage,  and  even  Caesar's  hair,  what  there  was  of  it,  is 
said  to  have  stood  on  end  when,  taking  the  standard,  and 
thus  prominently  assuming  all  responsibility,  he  led,  in 
the  passage.  On  reaching  the  other  side,  he  exclaimed, 
"  Here  do  I  leave  peace  behind — henceforth,  far  hence  be 
treaties." 

This  river,  so  often  mentioned  alike  by  the  well-read 
and  the  unread,  is  as  closely  linked  with  the  name  of 
Caesar  and  his  immortal  passage  as  the  Delaware  is  with 
that  of  Washington  and  his  celebrated  crossing.  Yet  to 
be  suddenly  challenged  to  say  where  it  is  would  probably 
be,  first,  a  cause  of  pain  as  an  innuendo  of  ignorance,  and, 
then,  of  puzzlement;  for  though,  oddly  enough,  when  its 
location  was  known  to  everyone  the  source  of  the  Nile 

646 


UMBRIA  647 

was  a  mystery,  now,  that  the  Springs  of  the  Nile  have 
been  discovered  and  are  accurately  charted,  no  one  knows 
where  the  Rubicon  rises ! 

At  the  time  of  the  Roman  civil  war  between  Caesar  and 
Pompey,  a  small  stream  of  this  name  divided  Italy  from 
Gallia  Cisalpina,  and  formed  the  southern  boundary  of 
the  province  of  Caesar  whose  passage  of  it  was  practically 
a  declaration  of  war  against  the  Republic,  so  that  to 
cross  the  Rubicon  became  the  equivalent  of  the  phrase, 
as  shortened  from  Shakespeare,  about  Casting  the  Die. 

Today,  those  who  live  on  the  banks  of  the  River  Luso 
call  it  II  Rubicone,  as  they  are  entitled  to  by  a  Papal 
decree  of  1756  declaring  their  river  to  have  been  the 
ancient  boundary  stream;  but  among  others  opinion  is 
divided  as  to  whether  the  Pisatello  a  little  north  of  it,  or 
the  Fiumicino  was  the  original  Rubicon. 

Lucan;  Pharsalia;  I.  183. 


Clitumnus 

In  a  letter  to  Romanus,  Pliny  the  Younger  says; — 
"Have  you  ever  seen  the  Spring  at  Clitumnus?  If  not 
— and  I  think  you  have  not,  or  else  you  would  have  told 
me  about  it — go  and  see  it,  as  I  have  done  quite  recently. 
I  only  regret  that  I  did  not  visit  it  before.  A  fair-sized 
hill  rises  from  the  plain,  well  wooded,  and  dark  with 
ancient  cypress  trees.  From  beneath  it  the  Spring  issues 
and  forces  its  way  out  through  a  number  of  channels, 
though  these  are  of  unequal  size.  After  passing  through 
the  little  whirlpool  which  it  makes,  it  spreads  out  into  a 
broad  sheet  of  pure  and  crystal  water,  so  clear  that  you 
can  count  the  small  coins  and  pebbles  that  have  been 
thrown  into  it.    Thence  it  is  forced  forward,  not  because 


648  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

of  any  declivity  of  the  ground,  but  by  its  own  volume  and 
weight.  So  what  was  just  before  a  vSpring  now  becomes  a 
broad,  noble  river,  deep  enough  for  ships  to  navigate, 
and  these  pass  to  and  fro  and  meet  one  anothei ,  as  they 
travel  in  opposite  directions.  The  current  is  so  strong 
that  a  ship  going  down  stream  moves  no  faster  if  oars  are 
used,  though  the  ground  is  dead  level,  but  in  the  opposite 
direction  it  is  all  the  men  can  do  to  row  and  pole  their  way 
along  against  the  current. 

"Those  who  are  sailing  for  pleasure  and  amusement 
find  it  an  agreeable  diversion,  just  by  turning  the  ship's 
head  round,  to  pass  from  indolence  to  toil  or  from  toil  to 
indolence.  The  banks  are  clad  with  an  abundance  of 
ash  and  poplar  trees,  which  you  can  count  in  the  clear 
stream,  for  they  seem  to  be  growing  bright  and  green  in 
the  water,  which  for  coldness  is  as  cold  as  the  snows,  and 
as  transparent  in  color. 

"Hard  by  is  an  ancient  and  sacred  temple,  where 
stands  Jupiter  Clitumnus  himself  clad  and  adorned  with 
a  praetexta,  and  the  oracular  responses  delivered  there 
prove  that  the  deity  dwells  within  and  foretells  the  future. 
Round  about  are  sprinkled  a  number  of  little  chapels, 
each  containing  the  statue  of  a  god.  There  is  a  special 
cult  for  each  and  a  particular  name,  and  some  of  them 
have  Springs  dedicated  to  them,  for  in  addition  to  the 
one  I  have  described,  which  may  be  called  the  parent 
Spring,  there  are  lesser  ones  separated  from  the  chief  one, 
but  they  all  flow  into  the  river,  which  is  spanned  by  a 
bridge  which  marks  the  dividing  line  between  the  sacred 
and  public  water.  In  the  upper  part  you  are  only  allowed 
to  go  in  a  boat,  the  lower  is  also  open  to  swimmers.  The 
people  of  Hispellum,  to  whom  the  place  was  made  over 
as  a  free  gift  by  Augustus,  have  provided  a  pubHc  bath 
and  accommodation;  there  are  also  some  villas  standing 


UMBRIA  649 

on  the  river  bank,  whose  owners  are  attracted  by  the 
charming  scenery.  In  a  word,  there  is  nothing  there  but 
what  will  delight  you,  for  you  may  study  and  read  the 
numerous  inscriptions  in  praise  of  the  Spring  and  the 
deity  which  have  been  placed  upon  every  column  and 
every  wall.  Most  of  them  you  will  commend,  a  few  will 
make  you  laugh.  But  stay,  I  am  forgetting  that  you  are 
so  kind-hearted  that  you  will  laugh  at  none.     Farewell." 

This  Spring,  now  known  as  Clitunno,  still  continues  to 
attract  attention,  and  to  evoke  admiration  for  its  size  and 
its  clarity.  Rising  at  the  roadside,  in  a  sheltering  grove  of 
poplar  and  willow  trees,  four  miles  from  Trobeia  in 
Umbria,  its  channel  soon  leads  it  into  the  river  Tinia,  and 
through  that  river  its  waters  empty  into  the  Tiber. 

Anciently  the  Spring  had  a  temple,  and  there  were 
several  lesser  shrines  about  it,  as  Pliny  describes,  so  that, 
when  the  place  came  to  be  a  Roman  post  station,  it  was 
given  the  name  of  Sacraria. 

What  is  now  shown  as  the  Spring's  temple  is  said  to 
have  been  originally  a  tomb  that  the  Christians  of  the 
Middle  Ages  economically  remodeled  for  use  as  a  church. 

Pliny  (Younger)  VIII.  letter  8. 


LIGURIA 

477 
Ertdanus 

The  Eridanus  of  the  Greeks  rose  at  its  source  in  a 
manner  that  well  merited  inspection  by  the  curious,  for, 
in  the  middle  of  the  day,  as  if  reposing  itself,  its  Spring 
was  always  dry. 

After  a  time  it  hid  itself  in  a  subtenanean  channel  until 
it  rose  again  in  the  country  of  the  Forovibienses.  Its 
length,  with  its  windings,  from  the  source  was  388  miles, 
and  it  conveyed  into  the  Adriatic  as  many  as  thirty 
streams;  and  where  it  discharged  the  vast  body  of  its 
waters  it  was  said  to  form  seven  seas. 

About  its  source  there  grew  a  number  of  pine  trees, 
called  padi,  whence  the  name  Padus;  and  in  turn  it  gave 
the  name  Transpadana  to  the  region  on  its  northern 
side. 

At  Ravenna  it  was  called  Padusa,  having  formerly 
borne  the  name  of  Messanicus.  The  Ligurians  called  it 
Bodincus,  signifying  bottomless. 

^schylus  placed  the  Eridanus  in  Spain  and  called  it 
Rhodanus  which  was  confounded  with  Radanus,  which 
discharged  into  the  Vistula,  and  then  with  the  Eri- 
danus. 

When  Phaeton,  for  the  first  time  driving  the  chariot 
of  the  Sun,  was  frightened  by  the  menacing  fangs  of  the 
constellation  Scorpion,  and,  dropping  the  reins,  allowed 
the  unguided  horses  to  leave  the  zodiac  track  with  their 

650 


LIGURIA  651 

load  of  heat,  and  scorch  the  Negroes  black,  and  set  fire 
to  the  world  and  to  Phaeton  himself,  it  was  the  Eridanus 
that  quenched  the  fire  in  his  burning  body  when  it  fell 
from  the  careening  chariot.  And  it  was  the  Eridanus 
that  received  the  tears  shed  on  its  banks  by  Phaeton's 
sisters,  Lampetie,  ^gl^  and  Phaethusa,  tears  that  formed 
the  first  specimens  of  precious  amber. 

The  Po,  less  classic  than  the  Tiber  although  it  is  the 
largest  river  in  Italy,  was  the  Eridanus  of  the  Greeks,  and 
is  the  Padus  of  present  day  Italians. 

It  takes  its  rise  in  latitude  about  44"  4'  N.,  from  two 
Springs  on  the  north  and  south  sides  of  Mt.  Viso  (of 
old,  Monte  Vesulus),  which  is  a  part  of  the  Cottian 
Alps. 

The  stream  at  its  source  is  6400  feet  above  the  sea,  but 
it  falls  a  mile  before  it  has  gone  twenty-one,  and,  in- 
creased by  rains  and  melting  snows,  it  becomes  navigable 
for  small  barges  60  miles  from  the  Springs. 

Absorbing  the  waters  of  Italy's  largest  lakes,  and 
taking  in,  from  both  sides,  the  contents  of  more  than  a 
dozen  rivers,  it  attains  a  breadth  of  half  a  mile  and  a 
depth  of  some  sixteen  feet;  and  after  running  a  generally 
eastern  course  across  the  country  for  four  hundred  miles 
it  enters  the  Adriatic  through  marshes,  and  through 
several  branches  that  begin  to  form  a  delta  fifty  miles 
from  its  debouchment. 

It  is  estimated  that  the  Po  drains  40,000  square  miles 
of  territory,  and  that  it  is  lowering  a  large  part  of  that 
area  at  the  rate  of  a  foot  in  729  years.  With  this  vast 
amount  of  detritus  it  is  pushing  forward  its  delta  at  an 
increasingly  rapid  annual  rate,  which  in  some  parts 
amounts  to  three  hundred  feet. 

Pliny;  II.  io6.     III.  20.     XXXVII.  11. 
Ovid;  Meta.  II.    Fable  i. 


652  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

478 
Aqvm  Statiell^ 

The  Aquae  Statiellae  were  hot  sulphur  mineral  Springs 
that  belonged  to  the  Statielli,  a  Ligurian  tribe  that  lived 
on  both  slopes  of  the  Apennines  where  they  form  the  flare 
of  the  valley  of  the  Bormida  River. 

The  Romans  subjugated  the  tribe,  sold  its  members  as 
slaves,  and  transformed  their  place  by  the  Springs  into  a 
large  and  populous  town,  in  which  they  constructed  baths 
of  costly  magnificence,  the  remains  of  which  are  still  to 
be  seen  at  the  modern  town  of  Acqui,  where  invalids  give 
the  old  Springs  a  numerous  patronage. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  2. 


479 
Padua 

Green  plants  were  produced  in  the  warm  Springs  of 
Padua. 

The  town  was  founded  by  Antenor,  after  his  flight 
from  Troy,  and  his  sarcophagus  is  shown  in  the  church 
of  S.  Lorenzo. 

Attila  razed  Padua  to  the  ground  in  452  a.d.,  but  it 
was  rebuilt,  and  is  now  twenty-three  miles,  in  a  south- 
westerly direction,  from  Venice. 

Pliny;  II.  io6. 


480 

The  Aponian  Springs 

The  Aponian  Springs,  as  their  name  indicates,  were 
cures  for  fatigue,  as  also  for  various  disorders  and 
maladies. 


LIGURIA  653 

They  rose  steaming  from  the  earth  by  the  Euganean 
hill  six  miles  southwest  of  Padua,  where  they  are  now 
called  Bagni  d'Abano,  and  Aquae  Patavinae,  and  the 
Springs  of  Aponus. 

The  numbers  who  visited  them,  even  from  distant 
parts  of  the  Roman  empire,  for  the  relief  of  bodily  ail- 
ments were  largely  increased  by  others  who,  mentally 
troubled,  flocked  to  the  nearby  oracle  of  Geryon  to  have 
their  doubts  or  fears  resolved ;  and  the  oracle,  after  hear- 
ing what  was  on  the  mind  of  the  inquirer,  sent  him  to  the 
Springs  to  judge,  by  the  luck  he  had  in  tossing  tali  into 
the  waters,  whether  Fortune  would  favor  or  cross  him. 
A  talus  was  the  astragalus  or  knucklebone,  one  of  the 
seven  bones  of  the  ankle  of  the  hind  leg  of  small  cloven 
hoofed  animals  like  the  sheep  and  the  calf.  Whether  or 
no  the  superstition,  connected  with  the  left  hind  foot  of 
the  rabbit,  can  be  traced  to  a  classic  origin,  the  childrens' 
games  with  jackstones  were  originally  played  with  tali 
by  Greek  maidens,  and  their  pretty  postures  at  the  games 
are  frequently  pictured  in  the  decoration  of  ancient  vases. 

The  bones,  modified  in  different  ways,  became  dice, 
and,  later,  dominoes,  bearing  ntmibers;  then  other  sub- 
stances were  substituted  for  the  bones,  sometimes  even 
paper,  as  in  the  Chinese  game  of  Tin  Gow,  the  predeces- 
sor of  Sniff  and  other  American  games,  which  is  played 
with  a  pack  of  cards  bearing  domino  numbers.  The  tali 
as  used  at  the  Springs  were  numbered  only  on  four  sides, 
the  2  and  the  5  being  omitted. 

Tiberius,  on  his  march  to  Illyricum,  stopped  to  consult 
the  oracle  of  Geryon  and  was  signally  honored  by  being 
directed  to  cast  golden  tali  into  the  waters,  and  the  suc- 
cessful outcome  of  his  expedition  was  indicated  by  his 
throwing  the  highest  numbers.  The  gleaming  blocks  of 
gold  remained  untouched  for  years,  and  the    figures  on 


654  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

them  could  be  plainly  seen  through  the  crystal  waters. 

Another  form  of  divination  at  the  Aponian  Springs  was 
by  means  of  sortes,  which  were,  in  this  instance,  inscribed 
oblongs  of  bronze  pierced  with  a  hole  for  stringing  them 
together. 

Other  kinds  of  sortes  were  made  of  wood,  or  some  light 
material,  and  were  drawn  in  various  ways,  often  from  an 
urn  containing  the  Spring's  water;  the  tablet  that  floated 
out  first  when  the  urn  was  tilted  being  the  one  from  which 
the  answer  had  to  be  ascertained. 

The  Springs  varied  in  temperature;  and  they  were 
averse  to  having  young  women  derive  benefit  from  their 
healing  powers,  for  it  was  well  understood  that  any 
maiden  who  entered  the  waters  would  be  scorched. 

Claudian,  in  one  of  his  longest  idylls,  devoted  three 
pages  to  describing  and  praising  these  Springs;  and  their 
cures  possibly  suggested  the  enchanted  fountain  from 
which  the  three  sons  of  St.  George  drew  the  water  that 
revived  St.  Anthony,  of  the  neighboring  city  of  Padua, 
from  his  deathly  lethargy. 

Lucan;  Pharsalia;  VII.  In  195. 
Martial;  VI.  42. 
Claudian;  Idyll  VI. 


GALLIA  TRANSPADANA 

481 
Pliny's  Wonderful  Spring 

Pliny  the  Younger  had  several  villas  around  the  Larian 
X«ake,  now  called  Como. 

He  was  the  nephew  of  the  Elder  Pliny,  the  Pickwick 
of  ancient  times  who,  even  after  writing  his  Natiiral 
History  and  a  number  of  other  books,  had  left  over 
165,000  unused  notes  as  material  for  other  volumes.  He 
expired  with  his  tablets  in  his  hands,  overcome  by  the 
gases  from  Vesuvius  as  he  was  making  notes  of  the 
eruption. 

The  uncle's  passion  for  making  notes  had  a  counter- 
part in  the  nephew's  fondness  for  writing  letters,  and  to 
those  describing  the  destruction  of  Pompeii  in  79  a.d., 
the  world  is  indebted  for  its  minute  knowledge  of  that 
catastrophe. 

In  other  letters  he  has  given  delightful  glimpses  of  a 
wealthy  and  cultured  Roman  gentleman's  homes,  and 
his  manner  of  living  and  spending  his  time. 

Near  one  of  his  Larian  Lake  villas  there  was  an  inter- 
mittent Spring  of  which  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Licinius 
Sura  as  follows ; — 

"I  have  brought  you  as  a  present  from  my  native 
district  a  problem  which  is  fully  worthy  even  of  your 
profound  learning.  A  Spring  rises  on  the  mountainside; 
it  flows  down  a  rocky  course,  and  is  caught  in  a  little 

655 


656  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

artificial  banqueting  house.  After  the  water  has  been 
retained  there  for  a  time  it  falls  into  the  Larian  Lake. 
There  is  a  wonderful  phenomenon  connected  with  it,  for 
thiice  every  day  it  rises  and  falls  with  fixed  regularity  of 
volume.  Close  by  it  you  may  recline  and  take  a  meal,  and 
drink  from  the  Spring  itself,  for  the  water  is  very  cool, 
and  meanwhile  it  ebbs  and  flows  at  regular  and  stated 
intervals.  If  you  place  a  ring  or  anything  else  on  a  dry 
spot  by  the  edge,  the  water  gradually  rises  to  it  and  at 
last  covers  it,  and  then  just  as  gradually  recedes  and 
leaves  it  bare ;  while  if  you  watch  it  for  any  length  of  time 
you  may  see  both  processes  twice  or  thrice  repeated.  Is 
there  any  unseen  air  which  first  distends  and  then  tightens 
the  orifice  and  mouth  of  the  Spring  resisting  its  onset  and 
yielding  at  its  withdrawal?  We  observe  something  of 
this  sort  in  jars  and  other  similar  vessels  which  have  not 
a  direct  and  free  opening,  for  these,  when  held  either  per- 
pendicularly or  aslant,  pour  out  their  contents  with  a  sort 
of  gulp,  as  though  there  were  some  obstruction  to  a  free 
passage.  Or  is  this  Spring  like  the  ocean,  and  is  its 
volume  enlarged  and  lessened  alternately  by  the  same 
laws  that  govern  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tide  ?  Or  again, 
just  as  rivers  on  their  way  to  the  sea  are  driven  back  on 
themselves  by  contrary  winds  and  the  opposing  tide,  is 
there  anything  that  can  drive  back  the  outflow  of  this 
Spring  ?  Or  is  there  some  latent  reservoir  that  diminishes 
and  retards  the  flow  while  it  is  gradually  collecting  the 
water  that  has  been  drained  off,  and  increases  and 
quickens  the  flow  when  the  process  of  collection  is  com- 
plete? Or  is  there  some  curiously  hidden  and  unseen 
balance  which  when  emptied,  raises  and  thrusts  forth  the 
Spring,  and,  when  filled,  checks  and  stifles  its  flow? 
Please  investigate  the  causes  which  bring  about  this 
wonderful  result,  for  you  have  the  ability  to  do  so:  it  is 


GALLIA  TRANSPADANA  657 

more  than  enough  for  me  if  I  have  described  the  phe- 
nomenon with  accuracy.     FarewelL" 

This  Spring  still  continues  its  vagaries  about  a  mile 
and  a  half  from  the  village  of  Torno  on  the  eastern  side 
of  the  lake. 

Pliny's  fourth  suggestion  explains  the  cause  of  the 
intermission  which  may  readily  be  reproduced  with  any 
receptacle  having  a  large  syphon  outlet  below  a  smaller 
inlet. 

As  the  ducts  approach  each  other  in  size,  the  inter- 
missions are  shortened;  when  the  sizes  are  made  equal, 
the  outflow  becomes  continuous. 

Of  Pliny's  villas  around  this  beautiful  sheet  of  Lom- 
bardy  water,  his  special  favorites  were  two  that  he  called 
Comedy  and  Tragedy;  and  he  wrote  that  from  one  of 
them,  perched  on  a  rocky  ledge  above  the  lake,  he  could 
watch  the  people  fishing;  and  from  the  other,  which  was 
on  the  shore,  he  could  fish  from  his  bedroom — and  almost 
from  his  bed. 

Pliny  (Younger)  IV.  letter  30.    IX.  7. 


4« 


VENETIA 

482 

TiMAVUS 

From  the  Springs  of  the  Timavus  River  a  whole  sea 
burst  forth  with  loudest  din  through  nine  mouths,  accord- 
ing to  Virgil. 

Strabo  described  them  as  seven  Springs  of  fresh  water 
which  flowed  into  the  sea  in  a  broad  and  deep  river, 
although  he  admitted  that  six  of  them  were  said  to  be 
salt,  and  that  on  that  account  the  place  was  called  "The. 
source  and  the  mother  of  the  sea." 

Later,  the  number  was  reduced  to  six,  and  then  to  four^ 
which  were  said  to  be  salt  only  at  high  tide,  whence  the>r 
were  inferred  to  have  some  under-earth  connection  with 
the  ocean. 

The  wonders  that  surrounded  the  sources  of  the  Tima- 
vus were  increased  rather  than  diminished  by  systematic 
and  perilous  explorations  of  members  of  Alpine  Clubs, 
who  in  recent  years  have  tracked  the  stream,  through 
deep,  dark  and  mysterious  underground  channels,  to  its. 
first  beginnings,  which  are  in  a  grotto,  between  the 
Schneeberg  and  Fiume,  whence  under  the  name  of  Reka, 
the  Illyrian  name  of  Fiume,  it  runs  northwest  for  about, 
forty  miles,  and  plunges  into  the  colossal  caverns  of  St. 
Kanzian,  and  makes  one  of  the  greatest  underground 
rivers  of  the  world.  It  flows  for  nearly  twenty-two  miles, 
through  a  labyrinth  of  caves  and  tunnels,  often  900  feet 
below  the  surface,  and,  receiving  many  affluents  in  its. 

658 


VENETIA  ^59, 

course,  it  burrows  under  the  mountain  called  Tschitschen — 
Boden,  and  emerges  as  the  Timavo,  200  feet  wide,  from 
a  cavern  at  San  Giovanni  di  Duino,  with  a  flow  of  more 
than  85  million  cubic  feet  a  day,  and  after  a  course  of  a 
few  miles  falls  into  the  Gulf  of  Trieste. 

The  grottos  of  St.  Kanzian  into  which  the  Reka  dis- 
appears begin  at  the  end  of  a  deep,  narrow  gorge  which  is 
closed  by  a  perpendicular  wall  550  feet  high.  In  front  of 
this  cliff,  and  about  100  yards  distant,  is  another  wall 
like  a  port-cullis,  under  which  the  river  rushes  through  a 
triangular  hole.  It  then  falls  in  a  cascade  to  the  foot  of 
the  great  cliff,  spreads  out  in  a  lake,  and  takes  its  sub- 
terranean way  in  a  series  of  cataracts,  falling  ever  and 
ever  deeper  into  the  depths  of  the  earth.  Having  made 
twenty-two  waterfalls  in  its  course,  it  forms  a  great  lake 
whose  only  outlet  is  downwards  through  spongy  rock  and 
narrow  fissures  through  which  it  pours  to  appear  again, 
near  the  village  of  Trebiciano,  in  a  cavern  300  feet  high 
and  700  feet  long,  into  which  it  enters  from  a  gigantic 
tunnel  one  thousand  feet  below  the  surface.  Here  it 
forms  another  lake  whose  drainage,  through  porous  rock, 
gathers  in  the  giant  stream  that  bursts  from  the  side  of 
the  mountain  at  San  Giovanni. 

The  region  of  its  birth  is  a  lofty  tableland  called  the 
Carso  Plateau,  a  volcanic  creation  among  the  Dolomite 
Alps;  it  is  a  stretch  of  3750  square  miles  honeycombed 
with  craters,  rocky  caves  and  dolmas  (pits),  covering 
seventy-five  miles  north  of  Fiume  and  fifty  east  of 
Trieste. 

The  region  has  been  likened  to  a  sponge  magnified  a 
million  times,  and  petrified. 

Though  waterless  on  top,  it  is  full  internally  of  rivers 
forming  great  lakes  where  blind  fish  swim  in  eternal  night. 
Four  hundred  and  eighteen  of  the  carso  caverns  have  been 


66o  ITALY:  CONTINENTAL 

explored,  and  practically  the  whole  length  of  the  Tima- 
vo's  subterranean  channel  has  been  followed. 

Strabo;  V.  i.  §  8. 

Literary  Digest;  June  gth,  1917. 


Monte  Falcone 

Opposite  the  River  Timavus  there  was  a  small  island, 
in  the  sea,  which  contained  warm  Springs  that  increased 
and  decreased  at  the  same  time  that  the  tide  rose  and  fell. 

These  Springs  are  now  called  I  Bagni  di  Monte  Falcone, 
or,  di  S.  Giovanni. 

Pliny;  II.  106. 


ITALY:  ISLANDS 

SICILY 

484 
Enna 

To  the  disciple  of  Daedalus  who  soars  over  Sicily  today, 
the  island  appears  like  a  leaf  of  many  tints  lying  a  little 
crumpled  on  the  surface  of  the  sea  below  him — a  leaf  of 
The  Garden  of  the  Sun,  as  this,  the  second  largest  island 
of  the  Mediterranean  came  to  be  called,  from  the  abun- 
dant verdure  nourished  by  its  semi-tropical  climate,  and 
a  soil  of  singular  depth  and  fertility. 

Its  flowery  luxuriance  has  cast  a  charm  on  every  visitor, 
so  that  under  the  spell  of  its  endless  waves  of  bloom  and 
floods  of  flowers  its  soberest  panegyrists,  from  Cicero  to 
Sladens,  have  seen  its  mountside  towns  as  magnified 
magnolias;  its  single  houses  as  stemless  cyclopeian  lilies 
lying  in  the  sunshine  on  its  hills;  and  its  weather-beaten 
hovels  as  tufts  of  homely  lichen.  An  efflorescence  is  seen 
in  every  feature,  so  that  even  flocks  of  slowly  grazing 
sheep  suggest  to  some  a  surge  of  flowers  against  the 
mountain  side  that  they  are  climbing. 

Though  none  of  its  numerous  rivers  is  navigable,  four 
of  its  sti  earns  have  brought  down  from  antiquity  a  pre- 
cious freight  of  Hterary  lore  in  the  legends  produced  by  the 
Springs  at  their  sources;  legends  that,  though  glorified  by 
Ovid  and  Theocritus,  may  have  originated  in  grotesque 
forms  among  the  prehistoric  SicuH,  the  Troglodytes  from 

661 


662  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

whom  many  of  its  present  inhabitants  are  thought  to 
have  descended,  for  the  crude  minds  of  these  simple 
beings  of  the  human  race,  then  in  its  infancy,  conjured 
up  strange  sights  and  fancies  when  their  terrors  were 
worked  upon  by  the  awful  sounds  and  throes  of  Etna 
that,  topping  two miles  by  314  feet,  was  visible  from  every 
part  of  their  island  cradle. 

When  the  earliest  Greek  settlers  arrived,  in  734  B.C., 
they  found  these  primitive  people  in  possession,  and, 
perhaps,  received  from  them  additional  details  regarding 
the  sacred  character  of  the  island,  and  the  intimate  life 
of  the  goddess  Ceres  and  her  family;  for  both  she  and  her 
daughter,  Proserpine  or  Libera,  were  born  in  Sicily,  and 
it  was  at  their  birthplace  Enna,  that  occurred  the  great 
calamity  whose  effect,  among  all  the  marvelous  inflic- 
tions of  mythology,  seems  to  rank  nearest  to  the  fatality 
of  the  flood,  in  its  world  wide  results  of  drought  and 
mundane  misery. 

As  Delphi  was  the  middle  of  the  ancients'  plate-like 
earth,  so  the  site  of  Enna  was  the  center  of  Sicily,  and 
was  called  the  island's  navel;  it  was  in  a  high  and  lofty 
situation  on  the  top  of  which  was  a  level  plain,  and 
Springs  of  water  that  were  never  dry. 

So  lovely  was  the  principal  one  of  these  Springs  that  it 
gave  the  place  its  name  of  "Agreeable  Fountain,"  as 
Enna  is  rendered.  Around  it  were  many  lakes  and  groves, 
and  beautiful  flowers  at  every  season  of  the  year,  flowers 
that  painted  the  fields  with  as  many  tints  as  Nature 
possesses,  and  filled  the  air  with  so  much  odor  that  it 
was  impossible  for  hounds  to  follow  their  prey  by  scent 
across  the  tract  they  covered,  with  marigolds,  violets, 
poppies,  hyacinths,  amaranths,  crocusses,  lilies,  and 
many  a  rose,  all  interspersed  with  thyme,  rosemary,  and 
meliote,  and  other  nameless  fragrances. 


SICILY 


One  leafy  grove  surrounded  a  lake  of  deep  water, 
Fergus  by  name,  where  the  songs  of  the  swans  were  heard 
to  perfection. 

This  lovely  spot,  among  all  the  flowers  of  all  the  earth, 
was  the  cradle  of  Proserpine. 

Here,  too,  Man,  in  this  island,  first  tasted  something 
more  appetizing  than  grass,  raw  roots,  bitter  herbs,  and 
acrid  acorns;  for  it  was  here  that  Ceres  presented  him 
with  corn,  and,  teaching  him  the  intricacies  of  its  cultiva- 
tion and  cookery,  laid  with  a  few  flat  heated  stones  the 
first  foundations  of  that  glorious  gastronomic  structure 
that  has  risen  to  the  height  and  splendor  of  the  modern 
kitchen,  the  mansion  of  an  artist  whose  daily  income  is 
often  greater  than  the  earnings  of  many  presidents  of 
banks. 

Nearby,  and  turned  towards  the  north,  there  was  a 
cavern  of  endless  depth :  there,  on  a  certain  day,  appeared 
dread  Pluto  who,  startled  by  a  more  than  oi dinar y  noise 
from  Etna,  had  driven  in  great  haste  behind  his  sable 
steeds  to  see  for  himself  what  violence  the  face  of  Earth 
had  suffered  from  the  mountain's  loud  eruption.  On  that 
day  Ceres  and  many  nymphs,  and  some  of  her  celestial 
friends,  were  enjoying  themselves  and  disporting  among 
the  flowers  about  the  lakes  and  fountains;  and  Venus, 
who  alone  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  Pluto  in  the  darkness 
of  the  cavern's  mouth,  induced  her  son,  the  midget  archer, 
to  sting  him  with  a  little  shaft  from  his  love-laden 
quiver. 

Pluto,  tingling  with  the  tickle  of  the  tiny,  pleasant 
pain,  at  the  very  instant  when  his  roaming  eyes  had 
Proserpine  in  view,  at  once  lost  sight  of  all  the  world 
besides,  in  the  mental  swoon  of  love;  and,  seizing  her  at  a 
moment  when  she  was  separated  from  her  friends,  he 
sprang  to  his  chariot  and,  concealed  by  the  neighboring 


664  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

heavy  foliage,  dashed  unobserved  away,  plunged  quickly 
through  Cyane's  Spring,  and,  striking  back  into  the  high- 
way to  Hell,  was  soon  at  home  again  with  Proserpine  his 
prisoner. 

None  of  the  busy  merry-makers  had  seen  the  abduction, 
but  hardly  had  it  taken  place  before  the  absence  of  their 
friend  was  noticed,  and  Pleasure  fled  as  Panic  spread  her 
gloom  around  the  Spring  of  Enna. 

The  gathered  flowers  were  dropped,  the  laughing  eyes 
were  filled  with  tears  and  consternation;  and  everyone 
began  to  seek  for  traces  of  the  missing  maiden.  One 
bevy  of  lovely  girls,  in  their  eagerness  to  leave  no  spot 
unsearched,  besought  the  higher  powers  for  wings  that 
they  might  leave  the  island  and  look  through  every 
foreign  country  to  find  their  lost  companion;  and  these, 
endowed  with  feathered  pinions  in  answer  to  their  prayers, 
became  the  Sirens,  the  beauty  of  whose  former  faces  the 
admiring  powers  forbore  disfiguring  with  feathers. 

Unhampered  by  any  of  the  vexatious  delays  the  Sicilian 
Railway  system  causes  the  modern  traveler,  Ceres  herself 
quickly  visited,  though  without  success,  every  crevice 
and  cranny  within  the  confines  of  the  island's  six  hundred 
and  twenty-four  miles  of  circumference;  and  then,  de- 
sisting not  even  at  the  approach  of  night  and  darkness, 
but  lighting  torches  at  the  flames  of  Etna,  she  began  a 
tedious  tour  of  all  the  Earth ;  during  which  she  introduced 
to  the  tribe  of  Triptolemus  on  the  mainland  the  new 
forms  of  food  with  which  she  first  gladdened  the  old-time 
savages  of  Sicily. 

Then,  failing  to  find  any  traces  of  her  stolen  daughter 
upon  the  habitable  globe,  she  traversed  the  vast  spaces 
of  the  starry  firmament,  eagerly  asking  every  orb,  the 
Moon,  the  Planets,  and  the  Sun  for  tidings  of  her  darling 
daughter. 


SICILY  665 

The  Moon  and  all  the  Planets,  blind  by  day,  could  tell 
her  nothing;  but  when  at  last  she  reached  the  Sun,  she 
learned  her  daughter's  fate  and  the  whereabouts  of  her 
confinement. 

Then,  hastening  through  the  avenues  of  air  among  the 
constellations  of  fixed  and  distant  stars,  she  called  on 
Jove  to  force  the  ruler  of  the  lower  world  to  give  her 
daughter  back. 

And  Jove  agreed  to  do  so,  if  Destiny  did  not  forbid. 

When  Destiny,  the  program  of  the  drama  of  The  Ages, 
unchangeably  inscribed  in  bronze,  had  been  consulted, 
they  found  that  Proserpine  should  be  returned  if,  during 
her  detention,  no  food  had  passed  her  lips. 

Now  Proserpine  in  all  that  time  had  really  eaten  noth- 
ing, but  she  had,  while  plunged  in  thought  and  pressing  a 
small  pomegranate  to  her  sorrowing  lips,  accidentally 
swallowed  one  or  more  of  the  little  grains  that  lay  against 
the  filmy  skin. 

Ascalaphus  was  the  only  witness  of  this  accident,  and, 
bursting  with  the  pride  of  knowing  something  known  to 
no  one  else,  he  told  of  the  occurrence.  Nevertheless,  in 
the  end,  the  decree  of  Destiny  was  partially  thwarted  by 
an  arrangement  that,  while  it  did  not  compel  Pluto  to 
surrender  the  daughter,  permitted  her  to  pass  at  least 
half  of  each  year  with  her  Mother. 

Proserpine,  however,  was  not  so  overjoyed  at  this 
prospect  as  to  forget  the  six  months  debt  she  owed  As- 
calaphus, and  she  paid  it  by  giving  another  member  to 
the  family  of  birds;  out  of  him  she  created  the  Owl,  art- 
fully endowing  him  with  an  appearance  of  great  wisdom, 
while  derisively  depriving  him  of  any  power  of  telling 
what  he  seems  to  know. 

As  the  story  of  Proserpine  was  passed  from  mouth  to 
mouth,  there  were  naturally  some  tellers  here  and  there 


666  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

who  tried  to  couple  their  own  names  with  the  episode, 
and  who  claimed  to  have  given  to  Ceres  the  clue  that  was 
really  obtained  from  the  Sun;  and  of  all  of  those  the  con- 
tention of  Arethusa  appears  at  first  sight  to  be  the  most 
plausible,  for  her  underground  passage  might  have  given 
her,  as  she  contended,  a  glimpse  of  Proserpine  in  the 
gardens  of  Tartarus. 

But  the  general  listener  will  find  his  credulity  so  drawn 
upon,  by  Arethusa's  own  history,  that  there  will  be  little 
left  for  her  account  of  her  part  in  the  pursuit  of  Proser- 
pine, and  as,  moreover,  it  is  evident  that  if  she  had  told 
Ceres,  before  she  started  on  her  world-wide  quest,  she 
would  have  had  no  need  to  make  it. 

Arethusa's  history  is  related  in  connection  with  the 
story  of  the  fountain  that  bears  her  name. 

It  is,  perhaps,  not  improbable  that  Ceres  was  an 
ancient  queen  of  Sicily  whose  delicacy  of  taste  led  her  to 
seek  less  gross  forms  of  food  than  her  animalish  ancestors 
had  been  satisfied  with,  and  that  she  was  on  that  account 
numbered  with  the  gods,  for  the  ancients  even  down  to 
the  time  of  Caesar  were  fond  of  deifying  their  rulers,  and 
many  idols  have  been  made  of  grosser  clay  than  is  repre- 
sented in  the  refinement  of  Ceres'  nature. 

Eiina  is  now  known  as  Castro  Giovanni,  and  local 
tradition  carefully  marks  a  cavern,  some  five  miles  from 
the  city,  as  the  one  that  Pluto  came  through,  and  the 
banks  of  a  small  near-by  lake  as  the  site  of  Proserpine's 
abduction.  The  flowers  and  the  grove,  however,  have 
disappeared,  and  the  desolation  of  the  neighborhood  may 
readily  be  accepted  as  the  natural  and  just  consequence 
of  its  ancient  desecration. 


Ovid;  Meta.  V.  Fab.  4  &  3- 

Ovid;  Fasti:  IV.  In  390  et  seq. 

Cicero  vs.  Verres;  2nd  pleading;  bk.  IV.    §  48. 


SICILY  6(67 

485 
Cyane 

The  fountain  of  Cyane,  who  was  the  most  celebrated 
of  all  the  Sicilian  nymphs,  for  Arethusa  was  not  a  native 
nymph,  was  a  large  and  lovely  pool  enclosed  by  mountain 
ridges  that  lay  between  Enna  and  Syracuse. 

When  Pluto  in  his  flight  with  Proserpine  approached 
this  pool,  the  nymph,  with  zealous  loyalty  to  her  im- 
perilled friend,  rose  in  its  waters  with  outstretched  arms 
to  bar  the  racing  chariot's  way,  and  sought  with  hurried, 
heart-born  words  to  turn  the  ardor  of  the  abductor  into 
milder  ways  of  wooing,  for  Cyane  had  been  wooed  and 
won  with  gentleness  by  Anapis,  a  river,  and  the  current 
of  their  love  had  run  without  a  ripple. 

But  Pluto,  heated  by  his  rapid  flight,  and  goaded  by 
the  Love  god's  little  dart,  used  some  violence  most  un- 
worthy of  a  god,  and,  plunging  downward  through  the 
Spring,  cleft  a  chasm  at  the  bottom  and  continued  on  his 
way,  leaving  Cyane  inconsolable. 

She  sorrowed  with  a  twofold  grief,  lamenting  not  only 
the  loss  of  her  friend  but  the  desecration  of  her  Spring; 
"She  is  entirely  dissolved  into  tears,  and  melts  away  into 
those  waters  of  which  she  had  been  but  lately  the  great 
guardian  Divinity.  You  might  see  her  limbs  soften,  her 
bones  become  subject  to  bending,  her  nails  lay  aside  their 
hardness;  each,  too,  of  the  smaller  extremities  of  the 
•whole  of  her  body  melts  away;  both  her  azure  hair,  her 
lingers,  her  legs,  and  her  feet,  for  easy  is  the  change  of 
those  small  members  into  a  cold  stream. 

"After  that,  her  back,  her  shoulders,  her  side  and  her 
breast  dissolve,  vanishing  into  thin  rivulets.  Lastly,  pure 
water,  instead  of  live  blood  enters  her  veins,  and  nothing 
remains  which  you  can  grasp  in  your  hands." 


668  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

But  still,  the  voiceless  water,  as  if  it  wished  to  show  its 
sentience  and  proclaim  that  the  faithfulness  that  had 
animated  the  flesh  yet  abided  in  the  fluid,  bore  aloft  on 
its  surface  with  tender  care  the  girdle  that  had  dropped 
from  Proserpine  in  her  passage  through  the  Spring;  and 
it  was  the  sight  of  this  well  known  cincture  that  gave  to 
searching  Ceres  the  first  encouragement  to  hope  her 
daughter  might  still  be  traced. 

This  Spring  is  the  source  of  the  river  Cyane,  now  called 
La  Pisma,  and  is  situated  in  low,  marshy  ground  at  the 
foot  of  the  limestone  hills  due  west  from  the  great 
harbor  of  Syracuse,  from  which  it  is  distant  about  two 
miles. 

It  has  a  beautiful  circular  basin,  about  fifty  feet  in 
diameter,  and  twenty  or  thirty  feet  deep. 

Its  pelucid,  blue  waters  well  up  with  a  strong  spring 
and  form  at  once  a  considerable  river  which  flows,  with 
a  deep,  tranquil  current  for  a  mile  or  more,  until  it  joins 
the  Anapus  immediately  below  the  Olympeium. 

Its  name  is  supposed  to  have  been  given  on  account  of 
the  deep  blue  color  of  its  water,  and  its  tutelary  nymph 
had  a  shrine  and  temple  in  the  immediate  neighborhood 
where  an  annual  festival  was  held,  the  institution  of 
which  was  ascribed  to  Hercules,  and  the  vestiges  of  an 
ancient  building,  to  be  seen  on  the  height  above  the 
Spring,  are  taken  to  mark  the  site  of  the  temple  of  ancient 
times. 

The  neighborhood  of  this  Spring  is  remarkable  at  the 
present  time  as  the  only  place  in  Europe  which  produces 
the  true  Egyptian  papyrus,  and  it  is  thought  probable 
that  the  plant  was  introduced  from  Egypt  by  the  Syracu- 
san  Kings  in  the  days  of  their  intimate  relations  with 
the  Ptolemies. 

Ovid;  Meta.  V.  409.     V.  462. 


SICILY  669 

486 
Arethusa 

The  deep  and  sacred  Spring  of  Arethusa  rose  near  the 
margin  of  the  sea  in  the  island  of  Ortygia,  a  tiny  offshoot 
nearly  touching  the  larger  island  of  Sicily. 

Arethusa  was  a  nymph  of  Greece  and,  in  the  words  of 
her  own  mouth,  was  so  beautiful,  and  so  robust  of  build, 
that  even  she  could  not  avoid  blushing  at  the  wealth  of 
her  personal  endowments. 

On  a  day  of  intense  heat  when  she  had  been  unusually 
active  in  skimming  the  glades  of  the  StymphaHan  forest, 
and  setting  her  snares  with  all  the  industry  upon  which 
she  prided  herself,  she  came  to  the  stream  of  Alpheus 
and  eagerly  plunged  into  the  cooHng  depths  of  its  clear 
and  eddyless  waters. 

Perhaps  Alpheus,  too,  blushed  at  the  sight  of  the 
robustious  beauties  of  the  buxom  bather;  at  any  rate  he 
lost  little  time  in  floating  up  from  the  depths  of  the 
pebbly  bottom  of  the  stream,  and  endeavored  to  seize 
her — but  she  fled.  With  the  swiftness  of  a  dove  in  flight 
she  ran  over  fields  and  over  mountains;  over  rocks  and 
over  crags;  and  it  was  not  until  she  had  covered  the 
greater  part  of  Arcadia  that  she  began  to  be  weary,  and 
called  upon  Diana,  with  whom  she  held  the  position  of 
bow-and-quiver  carrier,  to  come  to  her  assistance ;  and  the 
kindly  goddess,  hastily  plucking  a  dense  cloud  from  the 
sky,  threw  it  over  the  panting  racer  and  hid  her  from 
the  sight  of  her  pursuer. 

But  Arethusa  could  still  hear  his  footsteps  as  he  groped 
blindly  here  and  there  through  the  heavy,  opaque  fog, 
and  could  almost  feel  his  breath  as  he  shouted  his  en- 
treaties and  called  upon  her  by  name. 

In  her  fear,  "cold  perspiration  took  possession  of  her 


670  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

limbs  thus  beseiged,  and  azure  colored  drops  distilled 
from  all  her  body;  wherever  she  moved  a  foot  there 
flowed  a  little  lake.  Drops  trickled  from  her  hair,  and  in 
less  time  than  it  took  her  to  tell  of  it,  she  was  changed 
into  a  stream,"  and,  Diana  having  cleaved  the  ground 
below  the  cloud,  the  stream  sank  into  the  earth  and, 
passing  through  dark,  underground  caverns,  rose  to  the 
surface  as  a  Spring  in  the  distant,  sea-surrounded  island 
of  Ortygia. 

And  no  more  pleasant  retreat  could  have  been  selected 
in  which  to  recuperate  from  the  gloom  of  a  long  and  dark- 
some journey  underground,  for  it  was  averred  that  in 
Syracuse  there  never  was  a  day  of  such  violent  and  turbu- 
lent storms  that  men  could  not  see  the  sun  at  some  time 
or  other  in  the  day. 

Alpheus,  however,  would  not  be  evaded,  and,  as  a 
river,  he  eagerly  pursued  the  fleeing  stream  below  the 
sea  and  rose  beside  it  at  Ortygia. 

In  proof  that  one  of  the  river's  channels  really  passed 
under  the  sea  to  Sicily,  Strabo  recounts  that  a  cup  from 
the  temple  of  Olympia  came  up  opposite  the  fountain  of 
Arethusa. 

Pausanias  refused  to  credit  this  legend  of  love,  and, 
indeed,  if  Arethusa  told  the  truth,  then  Atalanta  should 
have  been  pilloried  as  an  impostress  instead  of  being 
lauded  by  all  the  ages  as  the  Princess  of  sprinters.  Other 
doubters  even  assert  that  the  first  name  of  the  fountain 
was  Alphaga,  the  Fountain  of  the  Willows,  and  that  it 
was  so  called  by  the  Phoenicians  because,  when  they 
discovered  it,  it  was  surrounded  with  trees  of  that  species. 

Still,  Arethusa  was  a  very  credible  personage  to  the 
Sicilians,  and  some  of  the  island's  earliest  coinage,  in 
existence  today,  bears  the  impress  of  a  fat  and  rather 
voluptuous  face  that  evidently  belonged  to  a  well  nour- 


SICILY  671 

ished  female  who  might  have  corresponded  quite  accu- 
rately with  the  description  that  Arethusa  gave  of  herself. 

Perhaps,  too,  the  world  is  indebted  to  Arethusa  for 
something  besides  a  pretty  coin  and  a  pleasant  conceit, 
for  anyone  who  will  may  imagine  that  Archimedes  who 
was  a  Sicilian,  having  been  born  at  Syracuse  in  287  B.C., 
and  who  thriftily  worked  out  his  problems  with  figures 
drawn  in  the  sand  of  the  Public  Square,  no  less  economi- 
cally used  the  water  of  the  public  fountain  of  Arethusa 
to  find  the  law  of  specific  gravity,  and  determine  how 
much  alloy  the  grafting  goldsmith  had  put  in  the  crown 
that  King  Hiero  had  ordered  him  to  make  of  pure  gold. 

Cicero  in  describing  the  fountain  as  he  saw  it,  said: — 
"The  city  of  Syracuse  is  the  greatest  of  the  Greek  cities 
and  the  most  beautiful  of  all — it  is  so  great  that  it  may 
be  said  to  consist  of  four  cities  of  the  largest  size.  At  the 
end  of  one  of  these,  called  the  island,  it  being  separated 
from  the  rest  by  a  narrow  arm  of  the  sea,  there  is  a  foun- 
tain of  sweet  water;  the  name  of  which  is  Arethusa,  of 
incredible  size,  very  full  of  fish,  which  would  be  entirely 
overwhelmed  by  the  waves  of  the  sea  if  it  were  not  pro- 
tected from  them  by  a  rampart  and  a  dam  of  stone." 

The  modern  Syracuse  covers  only  the  area  of  the  old 
island  of  Ortygia,  the  other  suburbs  of  Cicero's  time 
having  been  abandoned,  and  the  sweet  water  of  the 
Spring  had  often  become  savored  with  the  salt  of  the  sea 
when  one  of  the  many  earthquakes,  from  which  Sicily 
has  suffered  sorely  from  ancient  times  down  to  the 
destruction  of  Messina  in  1908,  has  opened  a  way  to  the 
ocean;  hence  it  is  found  referred  to  as  salt  by  writers  of 
one  era,  and  as  fresh  by  those  of  an  earlier  or  a  later  period. 

This  Spring  was  sometimes  called  the  sacred  Spring  of 
Ceres,  supposably  because  Arethusa  informed  that  god- 
dess, when  searching  for  her  daughter,  that  she  had  seen 


672  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

Proserpine  in  the  gardens  of  Pluto  in  her  underground 
passage.  The  designation,  however,  would  seem  to  be 
more  appropriately  due  to  the  Spring  of  Cyane,  and  it 
may  not  be  unlikely  that  it  was  so  bestowed  in  early 
times,  and  was  later  misapplied  by  someone  who  con- 
fused one  Spring  with  the  other  but  a  few  miles  away. 

Shelley  versified  Arethusa's  story  in  English;  and 
Keats,  in  his  Endymion,  amplified  it  with  an  account  of 
what  happened  underground,  where,  through  winding 
caverns,  the  two  Springs  dash,  "swift,  mad,  fantastic, 
round  the  rocks"  and  all  the  while  discoursing  the  one  in 
passionate  addresses,  and  the  other  Spring  replying  in 
phrases  seemingly  calculated  to  increase  the  hopes  of  the 
pursuer. 

It  was  at  Syracuse  that  Nelson  prepared  for  the  battle 
of  the  Nile  on  August  ist,  1798,  and  he  wrote  to  Lady 
Hamilton;  "Surely,  watered  at  the  fountain  of  Arethusa, 
we  must  have  victory." 

The  Alpheus,  now  the  Rufea  and  the  largest  river  in 
the  Morea,  rose  in  the  southeast  of  Arcadia:  in  its  course 
it  frequently  disappeared  in  one  place  and  reappeared  in 
another.  It  flowed  past  the  temple  of  Olympia,  a  beauti- 
ful vale  in  Elis  near  the  sacred  sycamore  grove  of  Altis, 
and  emptied  in  the  Ionic  Sea. 

There  was  also  a  fountain  of  Arethusa  in  Ithaca;  and 
one  close  to  Chalcis  in  Euboea  which  was  sometimes  dis- 
turbed by  volcanic  agency,  and  which,  according  to 
Leake,  has  now  disappeared.  There  were  tame  fish  kept 
in  this  fountain,  and  Dicaearchus  says  its  water  was 
so  abundant  as  to  be  sufficient  to  supply  the  whole 
city. 

Athenaeus;  II.  i6. 

Ovid;  Meta.  V.  462.     V.  564. 

Pausanias;  V.  7. 


SICILY  673 

487 
Acis 

The  Spring  of  Acis  rose  on  the  eastern  side  of  Sicily, 
near  the  base  of  a  lemon-crowned  height  of  Mt.  Etna, 
and  formed  a  small  river  of  the  same  name. 

It  was  the  jealousy  of  Polyphemus,  and  the  love  of 
Galatea  for  Acis,  that  brought  about  the  latter's  sudden 
end,  and  the  birth  of  this  Spring. 

They  who  have  derived  their  impressions  of  the 
Cyclops  Polyphemus  solely  from  the  account  that  Ulysses 
gave  of  him  when  he  was  still  smarting  from  the  superior 
wiliness  and  prowess  of  that  giant,  will  find  another  in- 
stance of  the  many  sidedness  of  every  character  in  the 
recollections  that  one  of  his  fellow  islanders  of  a  later  day, 
Theocritus,  has  left  on  record  to  the  credit  of  his  mildness 
and  the  softness  of  his  nature  when  his  heart  was  touched, 
as  it  was  by  the  charms  of  Galatea. 

She  was  a  sea  nymph  of  great  beauty  whose  name 
bespoke  her  fairness,  even  as  the  whiteness  of  milk  caused 
the  Greeks  to  call  it  Gala ;  and  the  account  of  the  genesis 
of  the  Spring  is  related  as  she  told  it  originally  to  her 
friend  Scylla,  who  was  a  maiden  until  Circe  in  a  fit  of 
jealous  rage  changed  her  into  that  terrible  rock  that, 
aided  by  the  opposite  whirlpool,  Charybdis,  has  been  the 
bane  of  mariners  from  the  earliest  days  of  sea-faring. 

Whether  Galatea  was  sporting  in  the  sea,  or  reposing 
on  the  shore  between  her  graceful  evolutions,  and  no  less 
when  absent  or  out  of  sight,  the  mind  of  Polyphemus  was 
engrossed  with  thoughts  connected  with  her  alone.  The 
flocks  were  neglected,  and  even  the  slight  toil  of  tillage 
that  sufficed  to  stimulate  the  virgin  soil's  fertility  was 
given  over. 

Seated  on  a  wedge-shaped  crag  of  the  mountain  that 


674  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

projected  into  the  surrounding  sea,  whose  surface  formed 
a  mirror  brighter  than  glass,  he  then  passed  the  happy 
hours  improving  his  appearance  and  admiring  those  per- 
sonal beauties  that  were  as  invisible  to  others  as  the 
wishes  that  fathered  them.  His  tree-trunk  cane  and  his 
ponderous  pipe  of  a  hundred  reeds  being  laid  aside,  he 
combed  his  hair  with  the  wondering  rake,  and  made  his 
beard  symmetrical  with  the  astonished  sickle.  Then, 
groomed  to  his  satisfaction  with  the  various  implements 
of  agriculture,  and  while  awaiting  the  appearance  of 
the  nymph,  he  planned  the  presentation  of  appropriate 
presents,  such  as  a  pair  of  shaggy  bear-cubs,  and  re- 
hearsed aloud  such  phrases  as  became  a  love-sick  Cyclops, 
until  his  woolly  wealth,  the  timid  and  forgotten  sheep, 
their  terror  at  his  roaring  overcome  by  curiosity,  crept 
cautiously  around  the  crag,  to  marvel  at  the  antics  of 
the  amorous  monster  while  trembling  at  the  thunderous 
declamations  that  he  poured  forth,  with  no  less  heat  and 
sound  than  if  all  Etna,  with  its  flames  and  rumblings,  had 
been  confined  within  his  hairy  breast. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  heart  of  fair  Galatea  en- 
shrined neither  a  mountain  nor  a  monster,  but  only  the 
image  of  Acis,  the  son  of  Faunus,  and  then  a  youth  whom 
only  sixteen  years  had  seen. 

Often  they  sat  on  the  seashore  at  the  base  of  the  crag, 
and,  concealed  from  the  eye  of  Polyphemus  by  blocks  of 
sheltering  lava,  listened  with  the  sheep  and  laughed  at 
the  storm  of  rhapsodies  that  the  Cyclops,  unconscious  of 
their  presence,  poured  over  their  heads,  rhapsodies,  in 
praise  of  the  charms  of  Galatea,  that  were  alternated  with 
vows  to  rid  himself  of  his  rival,  the  fragile  Acis. 

The  peeping  pair,  however,  growing  careless  in  con- 
cealing themselves,  the  giant  one  day  caught  sight  of 
them,  and,  before  they  could  scatter  out  of  range,  he  tore 


SICILY  675- 

a  mass  of  rock  from  the  mountain  and  hurled  it  with  so 
true  an  aim  that  Acis  was  pinned  to  the  earth  and 
crushed;  "The  purple  blood  flowed  from  beneath  the 
rock,  but  in  a  little  time  the  redness  began  to  vanish;  at 
first  it  became  the  color  of  a  stream  muddied  by  a  sudden 
shower,  and  then  in  time  it  became  clear.  Then  the  rock 
that  had  been  thrown,  opened,  and  through  the  chinks,  a 
reed,  vigorous  and  stately,  arose,  and  the  hollow  mouth 
of  the  rock  resounded  with  the  waters  gushing  forth." 

Acis  is  identified  with  the  existing  Spring  which  issues 
from  under  a  rock  of  lava  and  forms  the  small  stream  now 
called  Fiume  di  Jaci,  and  also  Chiaci;  this  little  river 
reaches  the  sea  after  a  very  short  course  during  which  it 
skirts  the  modern  town  of  Aci  Reale,  the  Acium  of  the 
ancients.  The  water  has  always  been  noted  for  its  cold- 
ness and  the  swiftness  of  its  current,  in  which  features 
one  may  see  typified  the  freezing  fear  of  Acis  and  the 
rapidity  of  his  short  and  unsuccessful  flight  from  Poly- 
phemus, and  thus  find  full  corroboration  of  the  truth  of 
Galatea's  tale. 

A  short  distance  away,  at  Aci  Castello,  a  succession  of 
separated  rocks  running  out  from  the  shore,  and  partly 
covered  by  the  sea,  are  said  to  be  those  other  but  missent 
missiles  of  the  giant  that  Ulysses,  more  lucky  than  Acis, 
managed  to  elude  when,  a  long  time  later,  he  escaped 
from  the  island  where,  it  is  no  less  indubitable  than  his 
own  existence,  he  enjoyed  many  a  cooling  draught  from 
this  very  fountain. 

Ovid;  Meta.  XIII.    Fable  7  et  seq. 

488 

Fountains  of  the  Palici 
The  fountains  of  the  Palici  were  twin  large  sulphurous 
Springs  with  geysei-like  eruptions,  in  the  form  of  a  dome. 


676  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

Their  streams,  thrown  high  into  the  air  and  falling 
heavily  back,  finally  hammered  to  pieces  the  partition 
between  them  and  converted  the  two  Springs  into  a  small 
lake,  480  feet  in  diameter,  the  surface  of  which  now 
bubbles  with  escaping  gas  that,  spreading  out  ineffec- 
tively in  the  larger  vent,  no  longer  raises  the  water. 

The  Palici  were  twin  sons  of  Jupiter.  Their  mother 
was  Hephasstus'  daughter  Thaleia,  who  sought  refuge  in 
the  earth  through  a  crevice  she  had  prayed  might  open 
and  allow  her  to  hide  from  the  wifely  anger  of  Juno. 

When  the  twins  reached  maturity,  they  shot  up 
through  the  basins  of  the  Springs  in  one  of  their  geyser- 
like  e.Kplosions,  and  the  natives,  accepting  their  awesome 
and  spectacular  advent  as  an  indication  of  their  divinity, 
received  them  as  local  deities  and  made  a  temple  for 
them,  and  in  early  times  offered  them  human  sacrifices. 

The  Springs,  whose  holiness  had  thus  been  attested, 
became  a  kind  of  Court  where  contracts  were  made  and 
oaths  were  taken,  and  where  perjury  was  detected  by 
writing  the  testimony  of  the  contending  parties  on  tablets 
which  were  then  thrown  into  the  water. 

The  tablets  of  true  testimony  floated,  and  those  of 
false  witnesses  sank — and  the  perjurers  immediately 
either  died  or  became  blind. 

The  temple  in  the  neighborhood  came  to  be  a  sanctuary 
for  runaway  slaves,  and  the  Springs  are  prominent  in 
history  as  the  place  where,  in  102  B.C.,  the  Second  Servile 
Insurrection  was  planned  and  started  by  the  slaves  whose 
disorders  kept  the  island  in  tumult  for  the  following  two 
years. 

The  lake  which  is  fifteen  miles  west  of  Leontini  is  now 
known  as  Lago  di  Naftia. 

Strabo;  VI.  2.  5  9. 

Ovid;  Meta.  V.     Fable  4. 


SICILY  677 

489 
Agrigentum 

There  was  a  Spring  at  Agrigentum  the  waters  of  which 
were  tainted  by  an  unctuous,  Hquid  bitumen  resembling 
oil,  which  was  collected  on  panicles  or  reeds,  to  which  it 
readily  adhered.  It  was  made  use  of  for  burning  in  lamps 
as  a  substitute  for  oil ;  and  also  for  the  cure  of  scab  itch 
in  beasts  of  burden. 

The  city,  which  is  now  called  Girgenti,  was  in  the 
southwest  part  of  the  island.  It  was  established  in  582 
B.C.,  and  was  said  to  have  had  nearly  a  million  inhabitants. 

The  enormous  wealth  of  the  leading  classes  enabled 
them  to  live  in  the  greatest  luxury  and  to  lavish  vast 
sums  even  in  the  erection  of  magnificent  monuments  to 
pet  birds. 

Pliny;  XXXV.  51. 


490 

Plinthia 
In  the  fountain  of  Plinthia,  nothing  would  sink. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  18. 


491 

Leontium 

At  the  town  of  Leontium  there  was  a  Spring  the  waters 
of  which  were  fatal,  at  the  end  of  a  couple  of  days,  to 
those  who  drank  of  them. 

Leontium  was  founded  in  730  B.C.,  on  a  site  taken  from 
the  native  Siculi,  where  wheat  growing  wild  was  said  to 
have  been  first  put  under  cultivation. 


678  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

The  town  was  deserted  time  after  time,  but  was  always 
repeopled,  and  still  exists  as  Leontini,  though  scourged 
with  malaria,  which  is  attributed  to  a  shallow  and  stale 
lake,  at  the  north  of  the  town,  that  may  be  the  product 
of  the  ancient  and  lethal  fountain. 

Pliny;  XXXI.  19. 


492-495 

TeMENITIS.       ArCHIDEMIA.       MAGiEA.       MiLICHIE 

The  people  of  the  Syracusan  territory  drank  of  the 
fountains  (the  bracketed  names  being  their  modern 
designations)  Temenitis  (Fonte  di  Canali);  Archidemia 
(CefaHno);  Magaea  (Fontana  della  Maddalina);  and 
Milichie  (Lampismotto). 

Pliny;  III.  14. 


Anapus 

Ceres,  when  searching  for  Proserpine,  passed  the 
Spring  of  the  gently  flowing  Anapus.  Nearly  seven 
hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era  the  town  of  Acras 
was  founded  by  this  Spring,  and  the  remains  of  it  have 
been  discovered  and  gruesomely  described  as  the  cadaver 
of  a  great  city. 

Above  the  Spring  there  are  some  remarkable  Hfe-size 
figures  cut  in  the  surface  of  the  living  rock,  the  chief 
figure  representing  Isis,  and,  if  she,  as  is  supposed,  was 
the  Egyptian  original  of  the  Romans'  Ceres,  it  is  possible 
that  the  story  of  Ceres  and  Proserpine  is  written  on  the 
rock  in  these  carvings,  and  connects  Anapus,  as  closely  as 


SICILY  679 

his  wife  Cyane,  with  the  incident  of  the  loss  of  the  god- 
dess' daughter. 

The  Spring  is  a  mile  from  the  modern  town  Buscemi 
and  twenty-four  miles  from  Syracuse;  its  waters  gush  out 
of  the  limestone  rock  in  considerable  volume  and  are 
unusually  limpid  and  clear;  they  flow  through  a  beautiful 
valley  and  into  the  harbor  of  Syracuse,  being  joined 
within  a  mile  of  their  mouth  by  the  stream  from  Cyane. 

Ovid;  Fasti;  IV.  In  468. 


497 

Amenanus 

The  Springs  of  Amenanus  at  one  time  flowed,  and  at 

another  time  were  stopped  up. 

After  a  stoppage  that  might  have  endured  for  several 
years,  the  Springs  would  reappear  and  flow  abundantly 
until,  as  it  was  supposed,  their  passage  to  the  surface  was 
again  obstructed  by  some  disturbance  in  Mt.  Etna,  from 
whose  foot  they  issued. 

The  Springs  rose  near  Catania  through  which  ran  a 
small  river  they  made,  a  river  now  called  the  Giudicello. 

The  god  of  the  Springs  was  represented  on  the  ancient 
city's  coins,  and  may  still  be  seen  in  specimens  that  have 
survived  to  the  present  time. 

The  fountains,  which  continue  subject  to  the  vagaries 
of  the  volcano  and  have  periodical  intermissions  that 
establish  their  identity,  were  a  few  miles  from  the  place 
at  which  visitors  started  out  on  their  venturesome  climb 
to  the  top  of  the  two  mile  high  mountain,  whose  frequent 
commotions  were  said  to  be  caused  by  the  giant  Typhoeus 
in  his  frenzied  efforts  to  escape  from  the  mass  that  Zeus 
threw  over  him  at  the  time  of  the  giants'  war;  when 
heated  by  some  prolonged  attempt  to  throw  off  the 


68o  ITALY:  ISLANDS 

mountain,  his  body  scorches  the  earth,  and  his  breath 
catching  fire  is  exhaled  as  streams  of  flame  that  burst 
through  the  summit  and  redden  the  sky. 

Long  ago  a  popular  and  dramatic  story,  inculcating 
filial  devotion,  described  how  two  Catana?ans,  Amphino- 
mus  and  Anapias,  braving  great  danger  during  an  erup- 
tion of  Etna,  attempted  to  outrun  a  river  of  molten  lava, 
while  loaded  down  with  the  weight  of  their  aged  parents. 
The  cataract  of  fiery  lava  gained  many  yards  in  every 
second  of  its  pursuit,  and  was  soon  at  the  heels  of  the 
panting  fugitives,  and  on  the  point  of  rushing  over  them 
and  their  terrified  burdens,  when  it  miraculously  swerved 
aside  and  passed  harmlessly  by,  to  the  wonder  and  de- 
light of  all  breathless  listeners. 

It  was  from  Catania  that  Rome  received  its  first  sun- 
dial which  was  set  up  in  the  Forum  in  B.C.  263. 

Ovid;  Meta.  XV.  278. 
Strabo;  VI.  2.     §  3. 
Pausanias;  X.  28. 


..•(■■; 


SARDINIA 

498-500 
Sardinia 

The  island  of  Sardinia  was  free  from  all  venomous 
creatures  save  a  tarantula-like  spider;  and  of  all  noxious 
grasses  but  a  bitter  herb  called  the  Sardoa,  which  grew 
about  its  Springs.  It  resembled  parsley,  and  anyone  who 
eat  of  it  was  said  to  die  laughing,  the  resulting  distortion 
of  the  features  being  called  the  Sardonic  Grin,  a  term  that 
came  to  be  applied  to  all  meaningless  or  simulated 
laughter. 

Perhaps  an  echo  of  this  laughter  of  torment  may  be 
found  in  the  name  of  the  fountain  of  Pains,  a  sacred 
Spring  enshrined  in  a  temple  that  was  uncovered  during 
excavations  of  the  Italian  ministry  of  Public  Instruction. 
The  structure  is  supposed  to  be  three  thousand  years  old, 
but  the  Spring  is  still  running,  and  the  medicinal  prop- 
erties attributed  to  it  may  have  been  made  use  of  in  the 
temple  by  priests  who  treated  victims  of  the  herb. 

The  roots  of  the  herbs  imparted  none  of  their  proper- 
ties to  the  Springs,  though  they  were  said  to  cause  the 
Sardinian  honey's  bitterness,  a  defect  that  still  prevails, 
although  the  accused  herb  has  not  yet  been  identified. 

Three  of  the  Springs  of  the  island  were  called  Lesitanae, 
Hypsitanae,  and  Neapolitanae ;  the  latter  being  now  known 
as  Sardara,  and  the  first  two  as  Benettuti  and  Fordun- 
gianus. 

681 


682  SARDINIA 

In  addition  to  the  mystery  of  the  unknown  herb, 
Sardinia  has  more  than  a  thousand  other  mysteries  in  a 
myriad  of  towers  of  massive  masonry  whose  builders  are 
unknown;  they  are  called  Noraghes  and  are  some  forty 
feet  high,  and  shaped  like  cones  with  their  upper  halves 
cut  off. 

Pausanias;  X.  17. 


INDEX  A 

Names  and  characteristics  of  Springs  and  Wells. 

Heavy  numbers  refer  to  words  in  titles. 

Light  numbers  refer  to  words  in  the  text. 


Abano.  Bagni  d',  480 
Abounding  in,  14 
Abraham's  ftn,  355 
Abu  Galgal.  Ain,  367 
Acerra  Well,  457 
AchaiaWell,86 
Achelous,  182 
Acheron,  249,  426 
Achillean  ftn,  267 
Acidalia,  149 
Acidula,  456 
Acis,  487,  175 
Adler,  393 
Adour.  Bagniferes  sur 

1',  374 
Adrastea,  44,  136 
JEa,  203 
.(Eanis,  181 
i^depsus,  283,  181 
.i^gaeon,  257 
iSgium,  loi,  104 
JEneid,  419 
iEnuscabales,  341 
.^sculapius,    59,    61, 

62,63,  75,  103,  117 
African,  304 

Sandhills,  307 
Aganippe,    160,  Prf., 

161,  162,  164 
Agreeable  ttn.,    157, 

484 
Agrigentum,  489 
Ai  lanni,  131,  164 
Ain,  353 

Abu  Galgal ,  367 

Ibrahim,  355 

Jedi,  351 


Ain.  Ras-el,  350 
Aine  Geul,  252 
Aix,  376,  377 
Aix  les  Bains,  377 
Aizan,  378 
Alalcomenea,  16 
Al  Bab,  367 
Albudinus,  429 
Albula,  463,  446 
Albulse.    Aquffi,    442, 

463 
Albunea,  442 
Alesium.  Mt.,  15 
Alexandrina,  429 
Alitaea,  237 
Alphabet  Spring,  295 
Alphaga,  486 
Alpheus,  30,  31  to  41 
Alu  Bunar  Darbund, 

258 
Alyssus,  24 
Amari.  Pontes,  333 
Amenanus,  497 
America's      Grecian, 

320 
Ammon,  310,  313 
Amphiaraus,  139,  49, 

286 
Amycus,  227,  278 
Amymone,     46,     47, 

139 
Ana,  389 

Anapauomene,  265 
Anapauomenon,  183 
Anapus,  496 
Anas,  389 
Anavolos,  60 

683 


Anchoe,  170 

Andros,  290 

Angels.  Fallen,  352 

Aniger,  96,  95 

Anigriades.  Fountain 
of  the,  96 

Anigrus  (see  also  Ani- 
ger), 22 

Anio,  429 

Anonus,  78 

Antioch.  Ftn.  of,  364 

Antiope,  133 

Anxur,  449 

Apis.  Wells  of,  327 

Apochrypha,  352 

ApoUinares.      Aquae, 
472 

Apollinaris,  372 

Apollo,  120,  272,  298, 
320,  4.72 

Apollonia,  187,  233 

Apollo's  Isle,  407 

Aponian,  480 

Aponus,  480 

Apostles',  437 

Aqs,  375 

Aqua : 

Crabra,  429 
Felice,  429 
Marcia,  461 
MattiaciE,  393 
Virgo,  429,  440 

Aquas: 

Acidulae,  456 
Albulae,  442,  463 
ApoUinares,  472 
Auraliae,  472 


684 


INDEX  A 


Aquae — Continued 
Calida?,    372,    388, 

370 
Convenarum,  374 
Cumana%  451 
GratianEe,  377 
Hypsitanae,  499 
Labance,  446 
Lesitanee,  498 
Mattiacaj,  393 
Neapolitanae,  500 
Passerianae,  473 
Passeris,  473 
Patavina;,  480 
Sextias,  376 
Sinuessa,  444 
Solis,  370 
Statielte,  478 
Sulis,  370 
Tacapitanae,  315 
Tarbellae,  375,  374 
Tauri,  467 
Therma?,  467 

Arabia,  340 

Aradus,  355,  60 

Araxus,  455 

Archidemia,  493 

Ardericca  Well,  363 

Arene,  95 

Ares,  131,  129 

Arethusa,  151,  279, 
285,  420,  486,  30, 
94,  295,  410,  411 

Aretian,  131 

Argos.  Spgs.  of,  46 

Argyra,  100 

Aricia,  441 

Armenia,  358 

Arms  of  Briarius,  257 

Ame,  2 

Arquebusade. 
Eaux  d',  379 

Arrow-proot,  276 

Arsinoe,  345 

Artacia,  404 

Artacian  ftn.,222,223 

Artem  sium.  Mt.,  51 

Artesian  Well  in  the 
Sea,  355 

Artynias,  243 

Ascanias,  226 


Asea,  30 
Asean,  30 

Asmabsean  Well,  259 
Asopus,  53,  146 
Aspropotamos,  182 
Astyra,  219 
Atalanta,  75 
Atarantes,  31  r 
Athamanis,  183 
Athens,  114 
Atlantes,  312 
Attic  ftn.,  128 
Aufeian,  461 
Augila,  308 
Aulai.  Sarant,  166 
Aulis,  135 
Aulocrene,  246 
Aulus,  135 
Auralias.  Aquse,  472 
Ausonia,  432,  180 
Autoorene,  246 
Aventine  hill,  433 
Avernus,    426,    415, 

419 
Azaritia,  228 

Bab  ftn,  367 

Babylonian    naptha, 
362 

Bacchus  (see  Diony- 
sus) 

Baetis,  382 

Bagistanus,  369 

BagTii  d'Abano,  480 
di  Per  rata,  467 
di  Grotta  Marozza, 

446 
di  Monte  Falcone, 

483 

di  S.  Giovanni,  483 
di  S.  Giuliano,  468 
di  Sasso,  470 
di  Stigliano,  472 
Bagni.  I,  444 
Bagni^res-sur-l'Adour, 

374 
Baia;,  451,  444 
Bains: 

Aix  les,  377 

Bourbonne  les,  371 
Bandusia,  459,  443 


Banias,  353 

Banitza,  51,  184 

Baphyra,  201 

Basitun,  369 

Bath  (England),  370 

Bath.    Helen's,  112 

Bathyllus,  37 

Beautiful  Stream,  237 

Beer-Sheba  Wells,  347 

Beit-el-Maa,  364 

Belemina,  76 

Bello.  Fonte,  443, 
459 

Beneficial  (see  Injuri- 
ous) ,  6, 22, 24, 84, 93, 
100,  158,  208,  238, 

277,  335,  354,  379, 

380,  444,  453,  455, 

463,  480 
Benettuti,  498 
Bethesda,  383 
Bethulia,  177 
Bhagiratha,  398 
Bing-Gheul,  366 
Bisa,  91 
Bithynian,  229 
Bitter,  333,  394 
Bitter  water,  275 
Blacksmith's  Well,  10 
Black  Spg.,  83,  258 
Blackthorn,  325 
Black  water,  19,  219 
Blood.     Ftn  of,  211 

104 
Blue.  Dark,  180 
Bodincus,  477 
Bog,  394 

Boiling,  250,  259,  393 
Bona  Dea,  430,  252 
Bonnes.  Eaux,  379 
Borboni.  371 
Bormo,  371 
Bormus,  226 
Boronis,  371 
Borv'onis,  371 
Bourbon,  371 
Bourbonne-les-Bains, 

371 
Branchidas,  266 
Breasts  of  Nature,  159 
Brentheates,  33 


INDEX  A 


685 


Briarius.  Arms  of,  257 
Brundusium,  460 
Bruttii,  210,  212 
Bubbling,  18 
Bucolics',  413 
Bull's  water,  50,  467 
Bunar  Darbund.  Alu, 

258 
Buphagus,  34 
Burinna,  299 
Byblis,  265 

Caere,  470 
Caeretana,  470,  472 
Casrulus,  429 
Caicus,  218 
Cainochorion,  232 
Cairo,  330 
Calanus.  Ftns  of,  397, 

278,313 
Calderelle.  Le,  456 
Caldes,  388 
Calidas.    Aquag,    372, 

388,  370 
Calippia,  237 
Callichorus,  122,  123 
Callirhoe,  356 
Callirrhoe,    116,    174, 

352 
Callisto,  20 
Calypso's  Isle,  408 
Cambalidus  (see  Bagi- 

stanus) 
Canali.  Fonte  di,  492 
Canathus,  58 
Candia,  301 
Career     Mamertinus, 

438 
Carnasium,  30 
Carrhae,  356 
Carrinenses,  385 
Carthage,  319 
Carthea,  294 
Caruru  boiling,  250 
Cassotis,  165,  160,  164 
Castalia,  164, 364, 416 

Preface,    160,    165, 
168 
Catarractes,  242 
Cauvsa,  234 
Cea,  296 


Cefalino,   493 
Center  of  the  Earth 

Spg, 323 
Cephisia,  125 
Cephissus,    170,    125, 

164 
Ceres',  403,  486 
Cerona,  191 
Chabura,  357 
Characteristics       (see 

Springs) 
Chaudes.  Eaux,  379 
Chilia,  137 
Chimerium,  186 
Chloris',  314 
Cicero's  water,  453 
Cicysium,  91 
Cinyps,  316 
Circular,  298,  353 
Cirrha,  168 
Cissa,  12 
Cissusa,  147 
Cithaeron,  143,  142 
Clseon,  244 
Claros,  239 
Clazomene,  241 
Clear,  229 
Cleite,  223,  224 
Clepsydra,     83,     119, 

117,  120 
Clitorian,  22 
Clitumnus,   418,  476, 

209 
Clusian,  474 
Cnidus,  260,  261 
Cocytus,  249,  419 
Cocytus  mire,  427 
Colchis,  278 
Cold,  161 

Collection  box,  139 
Common  Carriers,  30 
Como  Lake,  481 
Contoporia,  52 
Convenarum.     Aqus, 

374 
Coralis,  342 
Corcyra,  409 
Corinth's,  108 
Corycian    cave,     166, 

164,  249,  275 
Cosile,  211 


Cotylias,  465 
Couch  fountain,  466 
Crabra.  Aqua,  429 

Fountain,  429 
Cranon, 196 
Crathis,  23,  192 
Crena?,  179 
Crenoea,  130 
Crete,  301,  83 
Crocodile,  228 
Crow's,  167 
Crudelis,  226 
Cruni,  97 
Cucios,  339 
Cuma,  472 
Cumanas.  Aquae,  451 
Cupido,  223 
Cure.  Love,  100 
Cure.  Wound,  379 
Curtius,  429 
Cyane,  485,  265,  484, 

486,  496 
Cyaneae,  273 
Cyathus,  176 
Cydnus,  277,  296 
Cydonea,  289 
Cyene  (see  Syene) 
Cymothe,  106 
Cyparissa,75 
Cyparissise,  82,  141 
Cyphanta,  75 
Cyre,  320 

Cyrenc,  320,  73,  313 
Cyros,  103 
Cyrtones,  156 
Cytherus,  93 

Dabb,  367 
Dan,  353 
Daniel's,  368 
Danube,  390 
Daphne,  364,  164,  353 
Daradax,  367 
Darbund.  Alu  Bunar, 

258 
Dardes,  367 
Dascylum,  221 
Daulotos,  343 
Dea.  Bona,  430,  252 
Debris,  310 
Delos,  298 


686 


INDEX  A 


Delnhusa     (see    also 

Tilphusa),  164,  165 
Demetrius        naptha, 

362 
Denair,  242,  246 
Denizli,  250 
Dhahab,  367 
Dhi])otamo,  84 
Diana's,  298 
Dica'archai,  452 
Digentia,  443 
Diglito,  360 
Dine,  60,  186 
Dinus,  270 
Dionysus     (Bacchus), 

39,82,75,  141,  147 
Dionysus'  temple  ftn, 

290 
Dios  Theodosia,  290 
Dirce,  105,  130 

preiace,    129,     131, 

133 
Dirce  Well,  143 
Dodona,  183 
Dog  Spring.  Sea-,  56 
Donacon,  157,  138 
Donau,  390 
Dora,  344 
Dorcea,  65 
Dor>'la2um,  253 
Draco,  458 
Dripping  Well,  107 
Dropping  ftn,  107 
Dumbrek  Su,  403 
Dyras,  195,  178 
Dyrrachium,  187 

Ear-ringed  eel,  285 
Earthquake  predicting 

Wells,  24 
Earth  Spring.  Center 

of  the,  323 
Eaux  Bonnes,  379 

Chaudes,  379 

d'arquebusade,  379 
Eden's  Spring,  i 
Eels.  Ear-ringed,  285 
Egeria,  434,  441,  400, 

433.  436 
Ela,  217 
Ela;a,  155 


Elaion.  Mt.,  7 
Elaphus,  20 
Elea,  217 

Elephantina  Well,  324 
Eleusis,  260 
El  Hammath,  315 
Elisha's,  350 
EUopia;,  284 
Emmaus,  354 
Emotional     fountain, 

471 
Empedo,  119 
Enchanted  ftn,  480 
Engadda,  351 
Engedi,  351 
Enna,  484,  157,  260 
Enneacrunus,  116,  117 
Envoys'  Well,  66 
Ephesus,  236, 237,  238 
Epicrane,  152 
Erasinus,  54,  21 
Erechtheium       WeU, 

115,  268 
Eretrian  ftn,  286 
Eridanus,     124,    422, 

477,  114,  281,  381 
Er>'manthus,  32 
Erythraean    Sea    Spg, 

346 
Esh  vShar,  353 
Eski-Shehr,  253 
Es  Shiriah,  353 
Euboea,  28a 
Euleus,  368 
Euphrates,    359,    53, 

360 
Eure,  378 
Europas,  194 
E  urotas,  30, 64, 68, 76, 

194 
Eurymena;,  199 
Exampa;us,  394 
Ex    Pede    Herculem, 

33a 

Falcone.  Monte,  483 
Fallen  angels,  352 
False  goldfish,  386 
Fancy  fountains,  400 
Far.  Ftn  of,  367 
Farm,  415,  426 


Faunus  and  Picus,  433 
Fa\vn's.  Silvia's,  424 
Fay,  367 

Felice.  Aqua,  429 
Felonica,  471 
Feronia,  449,  471,  463 
Ferrata.  Bagni  di,  467 
Fire  kindling,  183,  187 
Flora's,  314 
Flowers,  314 

Well  of,  123 
Flute  ftn,  246 
FonsSolis,  313 

Tungrorum,  380 
Fontana    della    Mad- 

dalina,  494 
Fontane.  Tre,  439 
Fonte  Bello,  443,  459 

di  Canali,  492 

Gerulo,  441 

Grande,  459 

Velino,  464 
Fontes  Amari,  333 

Leucoga'i,  455 

Mattiaca3,  393 
Fordungianus,  499 
Forgetfulness.    Water 

of  (see  also  Lethe), 

137 

Fortunate  Springs,  77 
Fountain  festival,  pre- 
face 
Fountain    of    health, 

335 

of  Love,  462 

of  Sarnus,  458 

of   the  iVnigriades, 
96 

of  the  Palici,  488 
Founts   of    Mt.    Ida, 

401 
Frangovrysi,  30 
Frank  Spring,  30 
Freal<.  Nature's,  231 
Frog-birth  Spring,  269 

Gal  gal.  Ain  Abu,  367 
Gallus,  252 
Ganges,  398 
Gangotri,  398 
Garamantes,  309 


INDEX  A 


687 


Garden   of   the   Hes- 

perides,  322 
Gargaphia,   145,   140, 

144 
Gargo,  195 
Gate  ftn,  130 
Gelaco,  79 
Gelon,  245 
Georgics'.  The,  415 
Geronthrse,  81 
Genilo.  Fonte,  441 
Ghost-laying,  450 
Ghost's  Well,  215 
Gigartho,  292 
Giovanni.  Bagni  di  S., 

483 
Giudicello,  497 
Giuliano.  Bagni  di  S., 

468 
Glance,  no,  108,  159 
Goats.  Ftn  of,  351 
Golden    water,    369a, 

447 

Goldfish.  False,  386 
Gorgon  ftn,  161 
Gortyna,  301 
Gortynius,  41 
Graecia.  Magna,  210 
Grande,  Fonte,  459 
Gratianae.  Aquae,  377 
Great  River,  382 
Grecian  Spgs,  i,  210, 

432 
Grotta  Marozza. 

Bagni  di,  446 
Guadalquivir,  382 
Guadiana,  389 
Gythium,  62 

Hagno,  I 
Hales,  217 
Halirrhothius,  117 
HalitaeaWell,  237 
Hamman  I'Enf,  317 
Hammath,  354 
Hammath,  el.,  315 
Hashbeia,  353 
Hazezon-Tamar,  351 
Headache,  443,  459 
Health.  Fountain  of, 
335 


Heat    retaining,    196, 

393 
Helen's  bath,  112 
Helicon,  162,  201 
Helisson,  35 
Henna  (see  Enna) 
Hephaestus,  278,  313, 

397 
Herculem.    Ex    Pede, 

322 
Hercules,     284,     322, 

180 
Hercules.    Pillars    of, 

383 

Herctiles'  stream,  440 
Hercules'  Well,  49 
Hercyna,  137,  428 
Hermaphroditus,  264 
Hermes  (see  also  Mer- 
cury), 99,  105 
Hermione.    Wells   of, 

57 

Hesperides,  322 
Hiddekel,  360 
Hierapolis,  251 
Hiericus,  350 
Hill  Spring,  40 
Hill    Spg.    Aventine, 

433 
Hippius.  Poseidon,  2 
Hippocrene  (Helicon), 

161,  138,  160,  162, 

439 
Hippocrene  (Troezen), 

48,49 
Homer's,     399,     123, 

238, 279, 280 
Homer's       unnamed, 

4H 
Honey  ftns,  397 
Hoplites,  148 
Horace's,  443,  459 
Horcus,  194 
Hot.  Hercules',  284 
Hundred.  A,  114,  183, 

257 
HvergeknereWell,  188 
Hyampolis  Well,  169 
Hyantian     Aganippe, 

160 
Hydor.  Pikron,  275 


Hydrussa,  297 
Hyela,  217 
Hylas,  414,  226 
Hyllicus,  55,  50 
Hyoessa,  50 
Hypanis,394 
Hypelaeus,    236 
Hypereia,    189,     190, 

197 
Hypsitanas.  Aquae,  499 
Hyrie,  176 
Hysiae,  140 

lanni.  Ai,  131,  164 
I  Bagni,  444,  483 
Ibrahim.  Ain,  355 
Ice-cold,  20,  52,  183 
Ida.  Fts.of  Mt.,401 
lenidja,  202 
Ilerda,  387 

Iliad,  Spgs  of  the,  399 
Immortality     (see 

Youth) 
Inachus,  51,  198,  179 
Injurious    (see   Bene- 
ficial) 19,  100,  136, 
204,  206,  252,  264, 

338,  392,  395,  448, 

491 
lima,  202,  258 
Inopus,  53,  298 
Ino.  Water  of,  72 
Intermittent,  29,  120, 

287,  383.  384.  477, 

481,  497 
lonides,  93 
Irresistible,  340 
Isle.  ApoUo's,  407 

Calypso's,  408 

Pharian,  410* 
Ismenus,  131 
Ister,  390 
Italian,  210,  429 
Ithaca,  279, 410, 410b 
lulis,  295 

Jason's,  224 
Javelin  Well,  173 
Jay's  Well,  12 
Jechun,  276 
Jedi.  Ain,  351 


688 


INDEX  A 


Jericho,  350 
John.  St.,  131,  164 
loppa,  349 
Jor,  353 
Jordan,  353 
Jordanes,  353 
Jupiter.  Ftn.  of,  183 
Jupiter.   Well  in   the 

garden  of,  116 
Jutuma,  435,  412 

Kai  Hissar,  249 
Kanavari,  158 
Karitena,  30,  33 
Kefalovryses,  170 
Kephalari,  54 
Kerna,  165 
Kings'  Water,  368 
Kiss.  First,  356 
Kochbrunnen,  393 
Krene,  165 
Kr>-a,  137 
Rpi'a  Vrisi,  30 
Kryopegadi,  161 

Labanae,  446,  463 
Labranda,  262 
Lachffia,  406 
Ladon, 31,  131 
LEestrygonia,  404 
Lago  di  Naftia,  488 
Lake  Como,  48 1 

Lerna,  46 
Lake.  Tritonian,  209 
Lamb  ftn,  2 
Lampismotto,  495 
Lancea,  64 
Land.  Lotos,  405 
La  Pisma,  485 
Larianlake,  481 
Larine,  127 
Lariuslake,  481 
Latona's,  298 
Laughing,  245 
Laurentian.      Pliny's, 

445 
Le  Calderelle,  456 
Lechnus,  6 
Lelantum,  286 
Leontium,  491 
Lerida,  387 


Lema,  46 

Well,  III 
Lesbos,  288 
Lesitanas.  Aquag,  498 
Lethe,  396,  428,  137, 

382,426 
Letrini,  94 
Leuca,  216 

Leucogasi.  Pontes,  455 
Leuconius,  9 
Leucosyrus,  276 
Leucothea,  293 
Libanus,  365 
Libethra,  207 
Libethrias-Petra,  159 
Librosus,  395 
Libyan  ftn,  425,  419 
Licenza,  443,  459 
Light-emitting,  337 
Lightest  water,  368 
Lima,  382 
Limyra,  271,  272 
Linus,  6 

Lion's  village,  255 
I  iparis,  336 
Litas,  205 
Lizard's,  302 
Locria,  214 
Lophis,  148 
Lotos  land,  405 
Love-cure,  100 
Love.  Ftn  of,  462 
Lupad,  243 
Lusi,  25 
Lusius,  41 
Lyca.  Well,  215 
Lycus,247,243,366 
Lymax,  13 
Lyncestis,  184 

Macaria,  126 
Macrobii.  Ftn  of  the, 

335 
Maddalina.     Fontana 

della,  494 
Ma^ander,  i,  53,  246 
Maenads',  141 
Masnalus,  20 
Magffia,  494 
Magna  Graicia,  210 
Magnet-like,  385 


Magpie  Well,  12 
Magula,  67 
Mamertinus.    Career, 

438 
Marathon,  126 
Marcia.  Aqua,  461 
Marcian,  461,  429 
Marea,  329 
Marius,  70 
Marmara,  30 
Marozza.     Bagni    di 

Grotta,  446 
Mars  (see  Ares) 
Marsyas,  242,  53,  244, 

246 
Mattiacas,  393 
Mattiacum,  393 
Mauretania  mtn.,  323 
Mavromati,  83 
Mavropotami,  155 
Meadow  Well,  57 
Medma,  213 
Megara,  144 
Mela,  269 
Melangeia,  14 
Melas,  155 
Meles,  400,  238,  406, 

426 
Melia,  131 
Meliastas.  Well  of  the, 

28 
Melissae,  303 
Melites      (same      as 

Mela) 
Melosso,  268 
Memnon,  326 
Memnonian  fountain, 

326 
Memory,  137 
Memphis     Kilometer 

Well,  324 
Mendere,  402 
Menelaus',  26 
Menoscome,  254 
Mercury      (see     also 

Ilermes),  436 
Messanicus,  477 
Messeis,  68,  190,  69, 

189,  197 
Metagenes'  (see  Phere- 

crates),  211 


INDEX  A 


689 


Metaphorical,       278, 

397 
M  ethana,  56 
Mice  Springs,  25 
Midas,  240 

Ftn  of,  258,  202 

Well,  248 
Milichie,  495 
Milk,  79,  141,278,397 
Minyeius,  95,  96 
Miraculous,    75,   211, 

224,  438,  439 
Mire.  Cocytus,  427 
Modon,  89 
Monesi,  374 
Monte  Falcone,  483 
Moon.    Spg    in    the 
398 

V^  ater  of  the,  72 
Mother   of    Hypanis, 

394 
Mother    of     Springs. 

The,  445 
Mother  of  the  Sea,  482 
Mothone,  89 
Musa.  Wadi,  348 
Musical  voice  making, 
,  318 

Mycale.  Mt.,  266 
Mylasa,  268 
Myra,  272 
Mysaeum,  102 
Mysius,  218 

Naftia.  Lago  di,  488 
Nahor.  Well  of,  356 
Naia,  80 
Naiades — nymphs    of 

Springs  and  Wells, 

281 
Naptha .    Babylonian , 

362 
Narcissus,  157 
Nasi,  43 
Neapolis,  234 
Neapolitans.     Aquee, 

500 
Neda,  i,  2,  13,  41,  83 
Neleus,  192 
Nemausus,  378 
Nemi,  434 


Neminia,  464 
Neptune  (see  also  Po- 
seidon), 46 
Neptunian,  448 
Nigris.  Ftn.   of,  305, 

323 
Nile,  323, 53, 298, 359, 

475 
Nilometer  Well: 

Elephantina,  324 

Memphis,  324 

Syene,  324 
Nimes,  378 
Nine  Springs,  116 
96  rivers. 

Spring  of,  231 
Niobe,  235,  159,  400, 

412 
Nisyrus,  300 
No-Fountain      town, 

171,  294 
Nonacris,  19,  206,  20, 

23,  323 
Numicus,  423 
Nurse    of    fountains, 

401 
Nus,  277,  296 
Nymphseum,  71,  187 
Nymphasia,  42 
Nymphs,  Ftn  of   the, 

378 

Odorous  ftns,  278, 335 

357 
Odyssey.    Springs    of 

the,  399 
CEchalia,  87 
QixJipodia,  153 
CEdipus,  134,  129,  153 
CEnoe,  4,  51 
Ogygia,  408 
Oil  ftn.,  397 
Olympias,  29 
One     hundred,     114, 

183,  257 
Onesii,  374 
One  thousand,  366 
Ophiussa,  297 
Orchomenus,  17,  150 
Orcus,  194 
Orea,  175 


Orge,  373 
Oronte?,  365 
Ortygia,  486 
Osogo,  26S 
Ovid's,  462 

Pactolus,  240,  248 
Padua,  479 
Padus,  477 
Pagae  (sec  Pegae) 
Pagasae,  197 
Pains.  Ftn  of,  498 
Palais.  Stais,  294 
Palici.    Fountains    of 

the,  488 
Pamisus,  84 
Pan, 120 
Panias,  353 
Panopens,  171 
Panopus,  121,  116 
Paphlagonian  ftn,  230 
Paphlagonios,  326 
Paralysis,  392 
Paraporti,  130 
Parcel  Post,  30 
Parthenius,  123, 230 
Passer,  473 

Passerianae.  Aquae,  473 
Passeris  Aquae,  473 
Patavinae.  Aquag,  480 
Patraj   WeU,   98,  99, 

273 
Paul.  St.,  439,  437 
Pedasus,  89 
Pede    Hercidem.    Ex, 

322 
Peg£P,  226,  30,  322 
Pegassean      fountain, 

161 
Pegasus,  161 
Peirene,  109,  54,  108, 

no.  III,  281 
Pel,  204 
Pella,  204 
PeUanis,  63,  64 
Penelope's,  280 
Peneus,  193,  417,  194 
Perperena,  225 
Perseia,  45 
Perseus,  45,  44,  242, 

349 


690 


INDEX  A 


Peter.  St.,  438, 437 
Petra,  348 

Petra.  Libethrias,  159 
Petrifying,   261,    199, 

225,247,251,464 
Phaeacia,  409 
Phana, 177 
Pharae,  85,99,  io5 
Pharian  Isle,  410a 
Pharos,  332 
Phausia,  263 
Phazemonitas,  234 
PhenLx,  155 
Pherecrates  (see  Meta- 

Renes),  74 
Phiala,  353 
Phigalia  Well,  11 
Philip's  Well,  27 
Phocis,  163 
Phorcys,  410,  425 
Physadea,  47 
Picus.    Faunus    and, 

.433 
Piera,  90 
Pierian,  90,  160,  l6l, 

164 
Pikemi,  14 
Pikron  Hydor,  275 
Pillars    of     Hercules, 

383 

Pimplea,  200 
Pion, 237 
Pipe  f  tn,  246 
Pirene  (see  also  Pei- 

rene),  281 
Pisa,  91, 468 
Pisciarelli,  455 
Pisma.  La,  485 
Pitonia,  429,  461 
Plane  tree  ftn,  274, 88 
Plants.   Spring,      24, 

147,  175 

Plataea,  144 

Plataniston,  88 

Plinthia,  490 

Pliny.  Ftn  of,  380 

Pliny's  Springs: 
Bith}-nian,  229 
Golden  water,  447 
Intermittent,  481 
Laurentian,  445 


Tuscan,  466 
Wonderful,  481 

Pluto's,  74 

Po,  422,  477 

Pole    Spring.    South, 

323 
Polydeucea,  69 
Pope's    (see    Pierian) 
Poseidon     (see     also 

Neptune) 
Poseidon  Hippius,  2 
Poseidon's  Well,  114, 

115 
Posidian,  452 
Potniae  Well,  136 
Potoki,  201 
Priests.  Fountains  of 

the,  327 
Primeval  ftn,  157 
Prohibition's  Spg,  182 
Prophetic,     98,     105, 

138,  140,  183,  239, 

273,313,384 
Prussa,  220 
Psamathe,    154,   281, 

124, 171 
Pyramid  Well,  328 
Pyramus,  276, 361 
Pyxurates,  359 

Qimsam.  Wadi,  316 

Ras-el-Ain,  350 
Rebuking  Spring,  283 
Red  fountain,  338, 349 
Red  Sea  Spg,  346 
Rhacotis,  331 
Rhenus,  391 
Rhenus.  SmaU,  391 
Rhine,  391, 381 
Rhine.  Small,  391 
Rhodanus,  381,  477 
Rhone,  381 
Rhyndacus,  243 
Rock-making  Spg,  251 
Rome's,  429,  440 
Royal  ftn,  220,  221 
Royal  Waters,  185 
Ruad,  355 
Rubicon,  475,  387 
Rufea,  30,  31 


Sacred  Wells,  327 
St.  John's,  131,  164 
St.  Paul's,  439 
St.  Peter's,  438 
St.  Theodore's,  134 
Salambria,  194 
Salmacis,  264,  454 
Salmone,  92 
Salt  water  (see  Water, 

Salt) 
Samian  Spring,  291 
Sandhills',  307 
Sangarius,  256 
Santa  Marina,  71 
Sappho's,  288 
Sarabat,  240,  400 
Saranda,  30 
Sarant  Aulai,  166 
Sardara,  500 
Sardinia,  498 
Sardonic,  498 
Samo,  458 
Samus.  Ftn  of,  458 
Sasso.  Bagni  di,  470 
Saunion  Well,  173 
Sauros,  302 
Scamander,  402,  323,, 

401 
Scented  (see  Odorous) 
Scheria,  408,  409 
Scolitas,  36 
Sea-dog  Spgs,  56 
Sea  Spring.  Red-,  346' 
Sea  Springs: 

Aradus,  355 

Chimerium,  186 

Dine,  60 

Nile,  323 
Sea  Water  (see  Water^ 

Salt) 
Second   Roman   Spg^ 

432 
Seihun,  276 
Semiramis,  369 
Semnae,  118 
Serpent,  306 
Seven  Wells,  347 
Sextiae.  Aquas,  376 
Sicily's,  484 
Silvia's  fawn's,  424 
Simois,  403,  401 


INDEX  A 


69i> 


Sinaja-Wada,  394 
Sinuessa,  444 
Sipylus,  400 
Sithnides.  Fountain  of 

the,  113 
Siva's-mouth  Spg,  398 
Skripu,  149 
Smyrna,  238 
Snow-cold,  52 
Solis.  Aquffi,  370 
Solis.  Fons,  313 
Soracte.  Mt.,  471 
South  Pole  Spg,  323 
Spa, 380 
Spring  plants,  24,  147, 

175 
Sprng  of  all  rivers,  415 
Springs: 

Characteristics; 
Arrow-proof,  276 
Beneficial  (which 

see) 
Bull-like  roaring, 

170 
Cinema,  73 
Drunkards. 

Made.,  184 
Drunkards 

Cured,    22 
Fire-kindling,  183 , 

187 
Fire  Spring,  56 
Floats  all  things, 

490 
Floats      nothing, 

335 

Forgetfulness  (see 
also  Lethe),  137 

Honev,  397 

Horse-madden- 
ing, 136 

Hydrophobia 
cure,  24 

Injurious  (which 
see) 

Intermittent 
(which    see) 

Irresistible,    340 

Light      emitting, 

337 
Laughter,  245 


Magnet-like,  385 
Memory,  137 
Militant,  180,432 
Milk  (which  see) 
Miraculous 

(which  see) 
Musical,  318 
Nature's      freak, 

208,  231 
96    Rivers    from 

one  Spring,  231 
Odorous,  278, 335, 

357 
Perjury  test,   19, 

488  _ 
Petrifying  (which 

see) 
Prophetic  (which 

see) 
Rebuking,  283 
Scalded  maidens, 

480 
Sweet,    138,   220, 

221 
Thermos      flask, 

196,  393 
38  from  one  rock, 

208 
Traveling,  77, 271 
Var>'ing      (which 

see) 
Weeping,  244 
Wine,  etc.  (which 

see) 
Springs: 

Produced  by; 
Foot,  299,  322 
Horsehoof,       48, 

161 
Lance,  75 
Prayer,  224 
Tears,    109,   223, 

242,  265 
Thyrsus,  82 
Trident,  46,  115 
Springs: 
Topics; 

Cause  of  conten- 
tion, 76 
Ceres      informed 

by,  4?5 


Depth  unknown, 

46,442 
Disappeared  in  a 

Spring,  63,  226, 

414 
Dissolved  into  a 

Spg.,  109,  265, 

441,  485 
Endurance  of,  77 
Fountain  pen,  58 
Free    Masonry's, 

122 
Historyless,  77 
Identifying,      22, 

40,  58 
In  the  Sea,  60,  77, 

355 
Leaping    to    es- 
cape, 250 
Lost  Spring,  440 
Mice  Spring,  25 
Muses'      Spring, 

160 
Mystery  of  Spgs, 

304 

Not  of  water,  397 
Pausanias'   Spgs; 

Pref. 
Ram  changed  to 

a,  313 
Sign  for  mineral 

Sp..37i 
Volcanic      action 

and      Springs, 

56,  432 
Vowing  by;  Pref., 

130,  419 
Washing  in  Spgs, 

73 

Stais  Palais,  294 
Statiellap.  Aquae,  478 
Stigliano.    Bagni    di, 

472 
Stiris  WeU,  172 
Stone     making     (see 

Petrifying) 
Stratios.  Zeus,  262 
Strefi,  93 

Strophie,  132,  129 
Stymphelus,  3i,  54 
Styx,  19,  24,  194,  426 


692 


INDEX  A 


Su.  Dumbrek,  403 
Suez  Canal,  333 
Stilis.  Aquae,  370 
Sun.  Ftn  of  the,  313 
Sun.  Water  of  the,  313 
Surium,  272 
Sweet     (see     Water. 

Sweet) 
Sybaris,  104,  211, 192, 

216,  316 
Syene.Wellof,324 

Tacape,  315 
Tacapitanse.      Aquae, 

315 
Tsenaruin,  73 
Tamar.  Hazezon,  351 
Tamaricus,  384 
Taphiassus.  Mt.,  178, 

195. 214 
Tarbellas.  Aquae,  375, 

374 
Tarbclli,  375 
Tarpeia,  431,  432 
Tarracina,  448, 449 
Tarsus',  277 
Tartarus,  382,  426 
Tartessus,382 
Tasitia,  337 
Tatnos,  334 
Tauri.  Aquae,  467 
Taurius,  55 
Taurus,  55 
Tchoruk-Su,  247 
Tchy.  Tersoos,  277 
Tearus,  208,  231 
Tegea,  8,  218 
Teiresias,     138,     139, 

161 
Temenitis,  492 
Temesa,  215 
Temperance     Spring, 

182 
Teneae.  Wells  called,  18 
Tenedos,  287 
Tenos,  297 
Terrible  waters,  19 
Tersoos  Tchy,  277 
Theater,  38 
Thebes',  129 
Themisonium,  249 


Theocritus',  299,  413 
Theodore.  St.,  134 
Theodosia.  Dios,  290 
Thermae.  Aquae,  467 
TheiTneh,  231 
Thermodon,  231,  257 
Thermopyla?,  180 
Thermos    flask,    196, 

393 

Thespiae,  158 

Thessaly,  188 

Thestes,  321 

The  Wells,  30,  179 

Thisbe's,  361 

Thousand.  One,  366 

Three  stream  Spg,  46 

Three  substances. 
Well  of,  363 

Three  Wells,  3 

Thuria,2i2,264 

Thurii,2i2 

Tiassus,  67 

Tiberias,  354 

Tigris,  360, 359 

Tilphusa  (see  also 
Delphusa),  138, 
139.  157.  239 

Timavus,  421,  482 

Timon's,  100,114,121, 

Tino,  297 

Tiresias  (see  Teire- 
sias) 

Tisitia,  337 

Titaresius,  194,  193 

Toy-makers',  380 

Tragus,  43 

Transforming,  209, 
264 

Traveling  Fountains, 

77,  271,  464 
Tree  fountain.  Plane, 

274 
Tree  Spring,  88 
Tre  Fontane,  439 
Treton,  52 
Tricolini,  30,  42 
Tricrena  Mts.,  3 
Trident  Spring,  46 
Trident  Well,  115 
Trinemeia  (see  Trine- 

meis) 


Trinemeis,  125 
Triopas,  260 
Tritonian  lake,  209, 

322 
Tritonis,  5,  209 
Troezen  Hippocrene, 

48,  49 
Trophonius,  137 
Tungrorum.       Fons, 

380 
Tunis,  317 
Turkovrysa,  79 
Tuscan       fountains. 

Pliny's,  466 
Typhon,  365 

Ulai,  368 

Unnamed.    Homer's, 
411 
Rome's,  429 

Varying  fountains: 
143,  183,  233,  270, 
278,  287,  310,  313, 
330,  384,  486 

Velia,  217 

Velino.  Fonte,  464 

Vestal  Virgins',  433 

Vetulonia,  469 

Vichy,  372 

Village.  Lion's,  255 

Violet  odor  (see  also 
Odorous),  335 

Virgil's,  412 

Virgin's,  440,  429 

Virgins',  433 

Virgo.  Aqua,  429,  440 

Vishnu's-foot  Spg, 
398 

Volo,  197 

Vostitza,  1 01 

Vourla,  241 

Vroma,  56 

Vromolimni,  56 

Wada.  Sinaja,  394 
Wad-el-kebir,  382 
Wadi  Ana,  389 

Musa,  348 

Quasarn,  316 


INDEX  A 


693 


Water: 

Bitter,  275 

Bull's,  50,  467 

Cicero's,  453 

Golden,  369a,  447 

Kings',  368 

Lightest,  368 

Black,  155,  219 

Blue,  180 

Red,  349 
Water  of: 

Forgetfulness 
(See  Lethe),  1 37 

Ino,  72 

the  Moon,  72 

the  Styx,  19 

the  Sun,  313 
Water.  Salt: 

Cirrha,  168 

Dinus,  270 

Erechtheium  Well, 

"5 

Mt.  Alesium,  15 

Mylasa,  268 
Water.    Sweet,    138, 

221 
Waters: 

Black, 19,  219 

Royal,  185 

Terrible,  19 
Weeping  Spring,  244 
Well: 

JEgium,  loi,  104 

Alyssus,  24 

A  primitive,  363 

Ardericca,  363 


Artesian  in  Ocean, 

355 
Blacksmith's,  10 
Cyanese,  273 
Elephantina,  324 
Envoys',  66 
Erechtheium,  115, 

268 
Garden  of  Jupiter, 

116 
Ghost's,  215 
Hermes',  99 
Hvergelmere,  188 
Hysiae,  140 
Javelin,  173 
Lema,  iii 
Leuconius,  9 
Lyca,  215 
Midas',  248 
Philip's,  27 
Poseidon's,        114, 

115 

Pyramid,  328 
Saunion,  173 
WeU  of: 
Acerra,  457 
Achaia,  86 
.(^gium,  1 01 
Amphiaraus,  139 
Dirce,  142 
Flowers,  123 
Mothone,  89 
Nahor,  356 
Patraj,  98,  273 
Phigalia,  11 
Syene,  324 


Three    substances, 

363 

Wells: 

Earthquake      pre- 
dicting, 24 

Sacred,  327 

Seven,  347 

The,  30,  179 
Wells  caUedTenes,  18 
WeUs  of: 

iEsculapius,  59 

Apis,  327 

Beer-Sheba,  347 

Hermione,  57 
Willows.  Ftn  of,  486 
Wine  colored,  147 
Wine  effect,  184 
Wine  flavored,  230 
Wine  fountains,  278, 

290,  397 
Wine  Springs,  141 
Wit  dulling,  296 

Sharpening,  277 
Wonderful      Spring, 

481 
Wound-cure,  379,  24 

Xanthus,  402 
Xerghi,  194 

Youth,  Ftn.  of,  171, 

175 
Zama,  318 
Zea,  295 

Zeus  Stratios,  262 
Zille,  239 


INDEX  B 

Divinities,  People,  Places,  Subjects. 
(The  figures  refer  to  the  Springs'  numbers.) 


Aaron's  rod  and  Hercules'  club: 

49 

Abydos:  The  tablet  of  326 
Academia:  Cicero's  villa  453 
Aca mania:  Origin  of  the  name 

286 
Achelous:  His  great  love  for  the 

Sirens  182 
Acheron:  The  Tartarian  lake  427 
Achilles:  Wounds     Telephus     8 
Hero  of  Troy  89  Roused  by 
the   death   of    Patroclus    181 
His  spear  kills  Pyraechmes  203 
His   ancestry    281     His   con- 
test with  Hector  402 
Acolyte  breezes:  299 
Acorn  warriors:  20 
Acrisius:  Killed  at  quoits  45 
Acropolis.  The:  115  117  119 
Actason:  His  bed  144    Killed  by 
his  dogs;  their  biographies  145 
Actaeon's    bones    exorcise    a 
specter  150.  320 
Admetus:  Master  of  Apollo  59, 

189.  197 
Adrian:  (see  Hadrian) 
Adriatic  Sea  30 
.(Eacus:  Ants  changed  to  men  for 

him  281 
.(Echmagorus:  Son  of  Hercules  12 
iEetes:  Sets  tasks  for  Jason  278 
.^gaeon:  Had  fifty  heads  257 
.i^geus:  King  of  Athens  48  50 
^gina:  Carried  off  by  Zeus  109 
.(Egl^'s  tears  form  amber  477 
^gyptus:  His    sons    killed    by 

Danaus'  daughters  46 
^neas:     Rescues    Anchises     16 


Britain  founded  by  his  de- 
scendant 402  Interviews  the 
Sibyl  at  Albunea  442  Where 
he  wooed  Lavinia  445  His 
numerous  Etrurian  allies  474 

^olus:  His  islands  213.  396 

i^pytus:  Blinded  by  a  Spring  15 

Urography  117 

iEroplanes:  Homer's  238 

iEschylus:  44  477 

^sculapius:  40  50  His  end  59 
Dragon  prescriptions  61  The 
son  of  Fresh  Air  103  Names 
of  those  he  restored  to  life  59. 
117 

iEserninus  Marcellus:  301 

iEsop:  Fellow-slave  of  Doricha 
288 

iEthra:  Her  tears  explain  an 
oracle  216 

Afranius:  Conquered   by    thirst 

387 
Africa:  Heat  produced  freaks; 
people  that  were;  noseless, 
lipless,  tongueless,  earless,  one- 
eyed,  one-legged,  neckless, 
four-footed,  with  reversed  feet, 
tailed,  hair-covered    (women) 

304 
Agacturi.  The  341 
Agamedes  137 
Agamemnon:  His  capital  44    His 

tomb  45.  loi  135  164 
Agathocles  369a 
Agave:  Pentheus'  mother    141 
Agenor:  Sends  Cadmus  in  search 

of  Europa  131 
Agrippa:  426  429  440 


694 


INDEX  B 


695 


Agrippa.  M:  461 

Agrostis:  Grass   of    immortality 

175 

Air  theory.    Old  fresh  103 

Aladdin  21 

Alaric  65.  Frightened  by  a 
statue  114.  122  His  strange 
burial  211 

Albania  187 

Alcaeus:  Loved  by  Sappho  288 

Alcides  (Hercules) :  430 

Alcimidon  12 

Alcinous:  409 

Alcisthenes :  His  extravagance 
211 

Alcmaeon:  His  shield  131  Cause 
of  his  death  174 

Alcmena:  Mother  of  Hercules 
129 

Alcyonian  marsh:  Bottomless  46 

Alcyonides:  His  daughters  396 

Aleus  8 

Alexander  the  Great:  Cause  of 
his  death  19,  27  Son  of  Philip 
27  His  usefulness  77  Spares 
Pindar's  house  130.  131  Gen- 
ealogy 202  Birthplace  204 
His  dream  238  The  Gordian 
knot  240.  264  Visits  oracle  of 
the  Branchidae  266  Sickness 
277,  296  Visits  oracle  of 
Ammon  313  Seeks  the  Nile 
Spring  323  His  plan  for  a 
city  332  His  gold  cofFm  332 
Experiments  ^vith  boy  and 
naptha  362     In  India  397 

Alexandria  322  331  332 

Alexandrian  library:  332 

Alica  pottage:  455 

Allahabad :  398 

Almo :  434 

Alope: 123 

Alphabet:  131  135  210.  Its 
growth  295  Invention  of  325 
a.  in  Phoenicia  355 

Alpheus:  Tricked  by  Artemis 
94.  486 

Alpine  Club  explorations:  482 

Alps:  Dolomite  482 

Amalthea:  The  goat,  83 

Amber:  Its  origin  477 


Amendment.  The  XIX  120 
Amhara.  Valley  of :  315 
Amithaon  22 

Amphiaraus:  Predicts  defeat  of 
The  Seven  44.  46  49  53  139 

174.447 
Amphinomus:  His  filial  devotion 

497. 
Amphion:  Rocks      attend      his 

funeral    129.    130     His  magic 

music  131  133  142 
Amphitryon  130 
Amphitryte:  Wife    of    Poseidon 

282 
Ampsanctus.  valley  of:  426 
Amyclae:    Lost  through  silence 

67 
Amyctores.  The:  Lived  on  odors; 

were  mouthless  398 
Amycus:  Prize  fight  with  Pollux 

227 
Anapias:  His  filial  devotion  497 
Anchises:  8     Died     in     Arcadia 

16.  17     Died  in  Asia  Minor  18 
Anchor:  Stone  anchor  of  "Argo" 

222     a.  found  by  Midas  248 
Anchored  soldier  146 
Ancient  origin  of  modem  works: 

333  453 
Andorra:  Miniature  Free  State 

387 

Andree's  atlas:  323 

Androclus:  236  238 

Androgeus:  Restored  to  life  59 
King  Minos'  son;  victim  of 
athletes'  jealousy;  cause  of 
Ariadne's  misfortunes  301 

Androgini:  Hermaphrodites  304 

Andromache:  Parting  with  Hec- 
tor 189 

Andromeda:  Her  story  in  the 
stars;  her  chains  349 

Angels.  Fallen:  Where  they  fell 
352 

Anio:  434 

Ant:  Ant-origin  of  the  Myr- 
midons 281  Ants  feed  Midas 
240 

Antaeus  312 

Antenor:  His  sarcophagus  479 

Anthony.  St. :  Of  Padua  480 


696 


INDEX  B 


Anfichrist:  438 

Antigonus:  Rebuked  by  a  Spring 

283 
Antioch:  364 

Antiochus:  Wines  a  Spring  364 
Antiope:  Persecuted    by     Dirce 

130     Her  history  133  142 
Antiope  the  amazon :  48 
Antistius  Vetus:  453 
Antonine:  8 

Antony.  Mark:  350  458 
Aones.  The  129 
Apelles:    Criticised    by    cobbler 

108  Inspired   by  Phryne    158 

Birthplace  299 
Apennines  466 
Aphareus  95 
Aphidas  9 

Aphrodite  (see  Venus) 
Apis;    Reincarnation    of    Osiris 

327 
Peculiar  identification  marks 
that  he  bore  327 

Apollo:  His  jealousy  31  Slave 
of  Admetus  59,  189  Meets 
Creusa  118  His  cave  119 
Title  to  Delphic  oracle  163 
His  Delphic  temple  164 
Turns  the  crow  black  167 
Changes  Cycnus  to  a  swan 
176  Turns  dragon  to  stone 
218  Musical  contest  with 
Marsyas  242  Changes  Mi- 
das' ears  248  Love  for 
Branchus  266  Avenges  Psa- 
mathe's  son's  death  281  His 
precocity  and  birth  298 
Courts  Cyrene  320  His 
sacred  cattle  407.  442  471 

Apollonius  of  Tyana;  His  mys- 
teries 259 

Apollonius  Rhodius  397 

Appian  Way:  212  429  434  436 

449 

Apple.  The  163  402 
Apples  of  Venus  75 
Apries.  King:  321 
Aquarius:  Constellation  174 
Aquataccio  brook :  434 
Aqueduct  grafting:  229  429  434 
Aqueduct  construction:  429 


Arabia:  Wealth  of  347 
"Arabian  Nights":  207 
Arabs:  Whence  they  came  312 
Arachne:  Her  spiders  spin  black 

webs  in  sorrow  for  Thebes' 

fate  130 
Ara  Maxima:  430 
Ararat.  Mt:  188 
Arcadia:  City  in  Crete  83 
Arcadian  irmocence  i 
Areas  20 
Archemorus  44 
Archimedes:  486 
Arecomisci.  The:  378 
Areopagus  117  118  124 
Ares  (see  Mars) 
Arethusa:  Flees  from  Alpheus  30 

Whither  she  fled  279 
Arethusa:  City  206     Lake  359 
Argo  (see  Golden  Fleece) 
Argos  in  Acarnania  1 79 
Argus  174 

Argus:  Hera's  cowherd  for  lo  282 
"Argus":  U.  S.  warship  320 
Argyra:  Her  inconstancy  100 
Aria  207 
Ariadne:  Deserted  by  Theseus 

48    Consoled  by  Glaucus  175 

Sailed  in  the  "Theoris"  298 

Her     thread     guide    in     the 

labyrinth  301 
Ariantas.  King:  394 
Arimaspi:  The  one-eyed  304 
Arion:  Progeny  of  Poseidon  and 

Demeter  7 
Aristasus:  Cyrene's  son;  breeds 

bees  from  an  ox  320.  415 
Aristobulus:  397 
Aristocrates:    King    stoned    to 

death  18 
Ariston:  How  his  wife  became 

beautiful  68 
Aristophanes:  Comedy  of  "The 

Birds"  212 
Aristo  teles  (see  Battus) 
Aristotle:    25    114     His   garden 

121   125     Cause  of  his  death 

285.  397 
Arithmetic  355 
Arrowheads:     Cauldron     made 

from  394 


INDEX  B 


69r 


Anows:  The  lightest  391 

Art:  156.  of  the  rocks,  clouds  and 
stars  159 

Artabutitje.  Had  four  feet  304 

Artaces:  His  strange  death  222 

Artaxerxes:  Cyrus'  brother  367 

Artemesia:  Grief  for  Mausolus 
264 

Artemesia:  First  woman  ad- 
miral 264 

Artemis  (see  Diana) 

Ascalaphus:  Changed  to  an  owl 
484 

Ascanius.  Lake  226 

Asclepiades  59 

Ashes.  The  Hesperides  change  to 
322 

Aspri  Islands  289 

Ass:  Taught  man  the  value  of 
pruning  58  Loses  man's  im- 
mortality 171 

Assuan:  Its  dam  324 

Astragalus:  480 

Atalanta:  Races  with  Hippome- 
nes  75.  486 

Atarantes:  The  o.  had  no  names 

311 

Athamas:    Bacchus'    nurse    147 

Forsakes  Nephele  159 
Athena  (see  Minerva) 
Athens:  population:  house  rent 

114 
Athletics:    Cradle    of     90       a. 

among    the    gods    90    Time 

records  not  preserved  227 
Atlantis:  The  lost  island  312 
Atlas:  Petrified  by  Medusa  306. 

307312 
Atoms:  Theory  of  355 
Atreus:  Feeds  Thyestes  with  his 

children  45 
Attila:  479 

Auge:  Courted  by  Hercules  8218 
Augeus:  Refuses  to  pay  Hercules 

95 

Augustine.  Saint:  441 
Augustus:  8  347 
Auriga:  Constellation  115 
Autochthons:  188 
Avemus:  The  easy  descent  to 
426 


Aviators.  Ancient:  Musseus  114 
Da;dalus      114      Icarus     434 
Axe  prosecuted  115 

Baby  changed  to  dragon  90 

Babylon:  Its  walls  361  367  369 

Bacchantes.  The:  141 

Bacchus  (Dionysus)  (lacchus): 
46  130  133  141  His  birth- 
place; bom  several  times;  his 
nurses;  his  heart  eaten  by 
Semele;  his  first  bath;  cooked 
by  Titans  147  Worshipped 
on  Parnassus  163.  166  171  174 
His  nurses  183  Saves  Midas 
from  starvation  240  Spoofs 
Midas  248  His  festival  290 
The  Egyptian  b.  326  b.  in 
India  397  433  443 

Bad  and  Good  397 

Bady  95 

Baedeker:  An  ancient  75 

Bahreim  isles:  355 

Baius:  Friend  of  Ulysses  451 

Bandits:  139  215 

Barathnrm:  At  Athens  66 

Barrage  of  sand.    Battle  459 

Basques.  The  384 

Bath:  (England)  370 

Bathers  changed  to  birds  209 

Battus:  A  lion  cures  his  stutter- 
ing 320  321 

Bay  (see  Laurel) 

Bazi  River  i 

Beauty  and  Bravery  acquired  68 

Bebrycians.  The:  227 

Bees:  Feed  Comatus  299  Pro- 
duced by  oxen  320.  396 

Belesys:  His  palace  and  garden 
367 

Bellerophon:  48.  and  Pegasus 
109 

Bellerophon:  Letters  of  210 

Bethesda:  Its  troubled  waters 
383  . 

Bethulia-like  siege  177 

Bhagiratha:  398 

Bible:  Translated  at  Pharos  332 

Birds:  Rocs  21  Cannibal  21 
Stymphalian  21,  278  Mag- 
pies: Pierus '  daughters  changai 


698 


INDEX  B 


Birds —  Continued 

to  161  Bustards  170  Hawk 
171  Swallow  171  Nightingales 
161  171  201  Bathers  become 
209  First  music  teachers  230 
Quill  shooting  278  Eagle  278 
Peacock  174  282  Swans  298 
As  writing  masters  325  Ice- 
birds  396  Geese  432  Ceme- 
tery 489 

Birth  customs  of  the  Tibareni 
278 

Black  Forest :  390 

Black  Sea:  231  390 

Blest.  The:  Their  dwelling  422 

Boar-guide.  A:  236 

Boaz:  350 

Boccaccio:  209 

Boedromion.  Month  of:  122 

Bolshevik:  113 

Bolsheviki.  Ancient:  395 

Bona  Dea:  252  430 

Books  and  Writings.  Lost  210 

Boomerang.  An  ancient:  124 

"Boot.  The":  (Italy)  210 

Bormus:  226 

Bosphorus  457 

Boundary  lines  73 

Bourbon  kings  371 

Brachmanes     of     India;     their 
beliefs  397 

Bradley.  Miss  174 

Brahma  398 

Branchida3.  The:  Their  temple 
266 

Branchus  and  Apollo  266 

Brass  tempered  by  Pierene:  109 

Bread:  Mysterious  202 

Breasts  of  Nature  and  Woman 

159 

Brennus  at  TheiTnopylae  180 
Bribery  by  Athena  118 
Bridegroom  of  a  day  59 
Brindisi  460 

Britain's  fotmder  a  Trojan  402 
Britannica  plant:  Cured  quinzy 

if  eaten  before  thunder  392 
Brusa:  City  226 
Bruttii:  23  212 
Bucephalus:    Alexander's    horse 

397 


Buddha  394 

Bulgaria  207 

Bulis:  Heroism  of  66 

Bull:   Farnese   130    Marathon- 

ian  50 
Bulls:  Fire  belching  278 
Burbank  i 
Byron.    Lord:    Describes    Dirce 

130     Describes   Castalia    164 

b.  and  Egeria  434 

Cacus:  Three  headed  430 

Cadaver  of  a  city  496 

Cade.  Jack:  441 

Cadmus:  Preface.  Relics  of  his 
ship  1 29  Riddle  of  the  Sphinx 
about  him  129  Search  for 
his  sister  131  The  teeth  he 
sowed  135  His  old  age  141. 
188  210    c.  and  the  alphabet 

295,  325,  355 

Casneus  changed  sex  138 

Caesar:  His  search  for  the  Nile 
Spring  323  His  Spanish  cam- 
paign 387.  434  460  475 

Cassar  Germanicus  392 

Cairo  327  330 

Calabria  210 

Calchas:  Predicts  fall  of  Troy 
135  Died  because  Mopsus 
was  a  better  seer  138.  181 
Predicting  contest  with  Mop- 
sus 239 

Caligula:  429 

Calinga;:  They  lived  but  8  years 

304 

Callimachus  of  Cyrene  83  320 

Callirrhoe:  111  fated  name;  Loved 
by  Coresus  174 

Callisto:  Changed  to  a  constella- 
tion; her  misfortunes  20  21  22 

Calvinus.  Sextius  376 

Calydon  174 

Calydonian  boar:  Hide  and 
tusks  8  Hunt  32,  181.  53 
Killed  by  Mel  eager  174 

Calypso:  16  408  425 

Cambyses:  Killed  by  his  sword 
115     C.  and  the  Nile  323 

Camels:  Town  of  341 

Camenas.  The  434 


INDEX  B 


699 


Camp  Meeting  and  County 
Fair  471 

Campus  Martius:  435 

Canal.  Novel :  229  453 

Cancer.  Tropic  of  324 

Candia  (Crete)  301 

Cannibals:  The  first  171  c.  of 
Cambyses  335  404 

Capaneus:  Restored  to  life  59 

Capena  (see  also  Porta)  434 

Caracalla:  434 

Carbuncles:  309 

Cameades  on  Justice:  139 

Carob  trees:  194 

Carso  plateau:  Its  remarkable 
caves  249  482 

Caryatides  18 

"Cas  da  M.  Guerin":  278 

Cas?ander  19 

Cassiopeia :  Mother  of  Androm- 
eda 349 

Castalia's  fallacious  fame:  160 

Castor  and  Pollux:  Rebuke  the 
inhospitable  65.  67  Avenge 
Simonides'  loss  196.  435 

Cat:  20  Diana  changed  to  a 
cat  145  Erysichthon  eats  his 
cat  260 

Cattle  that  grazed  backward  309 

Caucasus.  Mt:  278 

Caunus:  Loved  by  Byblis  265 

Cavalry:  Dancing  cavalry  of  the 
Sybarites  211 

Cave:  Cor},'cian  164 

Caves.  Remarkable:  166  249  482 

Cecropia  114  116 

Cecrops  114  125 

Celebl:  Drinking  vessel  109 

Cemetery  of  imported  earth  468 

Census  taking  in  vScythia  and  in 
India  394 

Centaurs  178 

Centers:  Of  World  and  Greece 
163  Of  Rome  438  Of  Sicily 
484 

Ceos  torn  from  Boeotia  294 

Cephalus:  Kills  Procris  with  the 
unerring  javelin;  Takes  the 
Lovers'  Leap  124  His  guar- 
anteed dog  and  javelin  281 

Cepheus  the  sea  monster  349 


Cerberus:  73  His  many  exits 
from  Hades  159  Progeny  of 
Typhon  275.  322  426 

Cercyon:  Killed  by  Theseus 
123 

Cerealis.  Julius:  446 

Ceres  (Demeter): 

Mother  of  Arion;  Black  De- 
meter  7  Visits  Mysius  102. 
116  Seeks  Proserpine  122 
Taught  planting  123  157  In- 
flicts Erysichthon  with  hunger 
260  Her  priestesses  303.  484 
485  496 

Ceyx:  Changed  to  a  kingfisher 
396 

Chalastricvun  205 

Chalcodon's  tomb  4 

Chalcon  299 

Chamaeleon  230 

Chandler.  Dr:  164 

Chaplets:  Petrified  199 

Charaxus:  Sappho's  brother  288 

Chariclo:  Mother  of  Teiresias; 
upbraids  the  gods  161 

Charites.  The  149 

Charon:  57     His  boat  426 

Charon's  sewer  251 

Charybdis  365  487 

Chaucer  48 

Checkers  at  Corinth  109 

Cheeses  of  Nemausus  378 

Chelonophagi.  The:  334 

Cheops:  77 

Cherillus.  King:  8 

Childless  Olympus  3 

Chimasra:   Progeny  of   Typhon 

275 
Chimneys.  Ancient  202 
China:  312 
Chinese  316  325 
Chiron:  Centaur  22  96 
Chlidanope:  Mother  of  Cyrene 

320 
Chloris:  The  Greek  Flora  314 
Christianity:  73      c.  opposed  by 

the  silversmiths  237 
Chronology:  107 
Chrysaor:  Mate  of  Pegasus  306 
Chrysomallus    of     the    Golden 

Fleece  110,  159 


700 


INDEX  B 


Cicero:  157  232  429     Beheaded 

.453-  484 

Cimmerians.  The  396  426 

Cinesias  120 

Circe  16  487 

Circus  Maximus:  425 

Citha>ron,  the  king,  reconciles 
Hera  and  Zeus  145 

Cities:  Drowned  104.  Man- 
like 140  The  13  wicked  cities 
353     Cadaver  of  a  city  496 

Civilization.     New  centers  of  77 

Civil   War.     The   Roman:    323 

475 

Claudian  480 

Claudius:  301  372  429  452  472 

Cleis:  Sappho's  daughter  288 

Cleite:  224 

Cleomenes:  Bribes  oracle  163. 
316 

Cleopatra:  As  Venus  277  350 

Cleophylus:  His  "Annals"  236 

Cleostratus:  Kills  dragon  alter 
being  swallowed  158 

Climax  road  14 

Clock.     Main-Spring  of  a  119 

Cloud-like  hills:  133 

Cly temnestra :  44  45 

Clytia  queen  of  Cos  299 

"Coal  Sack.  The"  174 

Coan  cloth:  Diaphanous  299 

Coat  of  mail  of  mares'  hoofs:  117 

Cobbler:  and  Apelles  108  The 
c.  who  sewed  up  the  winds  396 

Coccus  berry:  172 

Coffin:  gold  332  Transparent 
336 

Coinage:  First  silver  281 

Cold  storage:  Ancient  333 

Colophon :  Origin  of  the  word  239 

Colossal  carvings  369 

Colossal  statues  327 

Colosseum  438  447 

Columbus  and  Indian  real  es- 
tate 210  Crossed  the  con- 
fines of  Earth  312 

Comatus:  Fed  by  bees  299 

Comedy:  Susarion  its  inventor 

"3 

Constantine:  163 
Constellations:    Great   Bear   20 


Sagittarius  160  Crow  167 
Aquarius  174  Lyre  207  An- 
dromeda 349  Cepheus  349 
Cassiopeia  349  Gemini  435 
Scorpio  477 

Contoporia  road  52 

Conundrum  (see  Riddles) 

Cookery's  evolution:  484 

Cookshops.  Altar  10 1 

Copis:  The  Feast  so  called  67 

Coral :  Origin  of  306 

Corcyra:  109 

Coresus:  Tragedy  of  CalUrrhoe 
and  the  priest  Coresus  174 

Corinth  108 

Coroebus  kills  "Punishment" 
281 

Corpse  columns  of  the  Appian 
Way  2 1 2 

Corycian  cave  in  Cilicia  275 

Cottus  had  50  heads  257 

Counterfeit  money:  Ancient  29 1 

Courage.  Germs  of  44  Dium  c. 
201 

Cow.  Cadmus':  129,  131 

Cow  phlebotomy  383 

Cows.  Streets  made  by  131 

Cranae  Island  62 

Creation:  Of  brutes  and  man  171 
Of  woman  i,  107 

Creation  schemes  107 

Creon.  King:  44 

Cresphontes :  Explains  oracles  90 

Cretans  83 

Crete  83 

Creusa  and  Apollo  118 

Creusa  and  Xuthus  120 

Cricket.  Tithonus  changed  to  a 
c.  326 

Crimea  395 

Crisus  121 

Crocotta.  The  304 

Croesus;  236  240  250  Tests  the 
oracles  266 

Cronus  (see  Saturn) 

Crotopus:  Father  of  Psamathe 
281 

Crow:  88.  Finds  Hesiod's 
bones  150  Crow  constella- 
tion 167     c.  guides  Battus  320 

Crowns.     Origin  of  30 


INDEX  B 


701 


Crystal  gazing  98 
Crystallomancy  73 
Ctesias  wrote  of  India  397 
Cupid  (Eros) :  Dwarf  divinity  3. 

158     Effect   of   his   shaft   on 

Pluto  484 
Curetes:  Origin  of  the  name  286 
Curiosity.  Literary:  299 
Curtius.  Q.  206 
Cuvier-like  architects  133 
Cybele  (see  Rhea)     Her  car  75 

Her  priests  434 
Cyclades      islands:      290     The 

smallest  of  them  298 
Cyclops:  59  189  487 
Cycnus  changed  to  a  swan  176 

475 
Cyllene.  Mt  i 

Cynics:  Origin  of  the  name  121 
Cynisca:     First    woman    horse 

trainer  65 
Cynomolgi.  The  dog-headed  C. 

304 

Cyrene  and  Apollo  320 

Cyrus:  258  266    March  to  Baby- 
lon 367 

Cyzicenian  ointment  89  223 

Cyzicus  222-226 

Daedalus:  First  aviator  114 

Dalmatia  187 

Damon  and  Pythias  10 

Danai.  The:  188 

Danaus:  Flight  from  Egypt;  his 

50  daughters  46     His  landing 

place  60 
Dancing  cavalry  of  the  Sybarites 

211 
"Dancing  ground  of  Ares"  131 
Daniel's  vision  368 
Dante  426 
Daphne:   Tricks   Leucippus   31. 

164 
Dardanelles:  159  402 
Darius     66.     His     vanity     208 

His  camel  362 
Dead  Sea  351 
Death:    Fettered    by    Sisyphus 

109     D.  prohibited  298 
Dejaneira     and     Nessus'     love 

philter  178  195 


De  Lesseps  333 

Delphi:  163-164  Oracle  of 
Apollo  163-164  173  183 

Demeter  (see  Ceres) 

Demosthenes:  Cured  himself  320 

Destiny:  A  program  484 

Deucalion:  Preface,  90  Re- 
peoples  the  Earth  107.  113 
In  Athens  114.  116  164 
Father  of  Hellen  189  In 
Cynus  282 

Deus  Rediculus  434 

Dewdrops,  the  tears  of  Eos  326 

Diamond  plow  of  Hephaestus  278 

Diana  (Artemis) : 
Her  statue  in  a  tree  17  Per- 
secutes Callisto  20  Kills 
Buphagus  34  Called  Cory- 
thallia  67  Tricks  Alpheus 
94.  109  Alleged  concealed 
deformity  145  Deaths  she 
caused  145  Changed  into  a 
cat  145  Her  temple  at 
Ephesus  237,  269  Her 
birth  298.  434  441  486 

Dice  of  Tiberius.  Gold  480 

Dice  oracle  of  Geryon  480 

Dickens  115 

Dido: 425 

Dindymus.  Mt:  224 

Diogenes  perhaps  misjudged  108 

Diogenes     discovers     the     Nile 

Spg  323 

Diomed  (see  Diomedes) 

Diomedes  of  Argos  51 

Diomedes  of  Thrace:  Fed  his 
horses  on  human  flesh  89 

Diomedes  changed  to  a  bird  212 

Dione:  183 

Dionysia:  Bacchus'  festivals  147 

Dionysus  (see  Bacchus) 

Dirce:  Her  persecutions  130 

Discord:  Her  wedding  present 
281 

Discoverers:  Their  courtesy  210 

Distance  measures:  Preface. 

Dodona:  Its  oracle  183 

Dodona  oak:  Its  ants  become 
men  281 

Dog:  Bite  cure  24  His  expres- 
sions 231 


702 


INDEX  B 


Doliones.  The:  223 

Dominoes  480 

Domitian:  and  the  Jews  434.  448 

Donaueschingen  390 

Donkeys  of  the  Ansacs  238 

Don  Quixote  389 

Doricha:  Original  Cinderella  288 

Dorieus  316 

Doris:  His  50  daughters  281 

Dragon:  Eats  Opheltes  44  Aes- 
culapius' 61  Baby  changed 
to  a  d.  90  Cave  of  the  d. 
129  Mars'  d.  131  Slain  by 
Cadmus  131  D'^  teeth  be- 
come men  131  On  Alcmason's 
shield  131  Dragon  turned  to 
stone  218  Ladon  of  the  Hes- 
perides  322 

Dragon  scales  117 

Dragon's  blood  poison  120 

Dreams:  Divination  by  139  d. 
mimics  396  The  gates  of  d. 
426 

Drought  and  Famine  in  Egypt 

324 
Dumas.  Alex.  131 
Dye:  Shellfish  173 
Dyers:  172 

Eagle:  Feeds  on  Prometheus  278 
Earth :  Confines  of  3 1 2    Thought 

to  be  alive  383 
Earthquake:  56  loi  104  250  282 

284285 
Eastern  thought:  In  Greece  397 
Echidna:  Mother  of  Freaks  46 
Echo  deludes  Narcissus  157 
Eden:  i 
Edisons.    Ancient:    Callimachus 

114    InSybaris2ii 
Eels:  170    Adorned  e.   262   285 

357 
Egg:  Leda's  unhatched  65 
Egypt:  Preface.     Invaded  9000 

B.C.  312     Its  spectres  324 
Egyptian:  Engineering  skill  327, 

333.     Coast  guard  331 
Egyptians  188 
Eleatic  philosophy  217 
Elegy  discomfits  Tragedy:  462 
Eleusinian  mysteries  122 


Eleutherae  133 

Elijah  139 

Elis  30 

Elisha  I  350 

Elymi  of  Sicily.     The  210 

Elysian  Plain  382 

Elysium:  419  426  428 

Endor.  Witch  of  137 

Engineering.  Ancient  170  291 

Enippe  16 

Eos:  Her  unending  grief  326 

Epaminondas  40  131 

Epeius:  His  cowardice  171    His 

tools  preserved  210.  281  294 
Epeus  (see  Epeius) 
Ephesus:  239.     Temple  of  Diana 

at  E.  280 
Ephialtes:  Betrayer  at  Thermo- 

pylas  180 
Ephorus:  426 

Epictetus:  His  birthplace  251 
Epictetus:  A  district  252 
Epidaurus:  59 
Epidious  Nuncionus:  Became  a 

god  458 
Epidius.  C :  Thought  trees  talked 

458 
Epimetheus  marries  Pandora  107 
Epopeus  abducts  Antiope  133 
Equator  crossing  pranks  298 
Erasistratus  286 
Eratosthenes  396 
Erechtheus:  Inventor  of  chariots 

115  Father  of  Creusa  118  124 
Eridanus  and  the  Rhone  381 
Eros  (see  Cupid)  158 
Erymanthian  boar  32 
Erysichthon's  hunger  260 
Erythras:  Son  of  Perseus  346 
Eskimo.  The  312 
Esseni:   Their   strange   customs 

351 
Ethiopians:  The  handsomest  335 
Etna.  Mt.  484  487.  497 
Etrurians:     Origin     471     Their 

history  lost  474 
Etruscan  origin  471 
Eucalyptus  liquor  439 
Euganean  Hill  480 
Eumajus:    Ulysses'    herder    279 

410 


INDEX  B 


703 


Eunomus'        grasshopper-string 

harp  214 
Eupalinus:  Architect  291 
Eupheme:  The  Muses'  nurse  160 
Euphrates:  Its  windings  363 
Euripides:   109  120     His  "Bac- 
chantes" 141     His  tomb  206, 

285     Praises  Arethusa  285 
Euripus:  Its  strange  tides  285 
Europa:  129  131     In  Crete  301 
Eur>'ale:  22 
Eurybatus:     Possibly     colluded 

with  oracles  266 
Eurycleia:    Ulysses'    nurse    280 

411 
Euryleonis:        Female        horse 

breeder  65 
Eurypylus'  chest:  98 
Eurystheus:  Is  slain  by  lolaus 

restored  to  life  126.  226 
Eurytion  181 
Eusebius  107 
Euthymus:  The  athlete  and  the 

ghost    214,    215     Marries    a 

ghost's  widow  215 
Euthymus  the  Tyrant  268 
Euxine  sea  390 
Evander:   2     His  birthplace  8. 

210 
Eve:  I  75 
Eyecures.  Ancient  453 

Fatherless  son  of  Hera  278 

Faunus  and  Picus:  434  442 

Feast.  A  Spartan:  67 

Feronia :  Sabine  divinity  449 

Fielding  109 

Field  of  Blood:  459 

Fight  between  Amycus  and 
Apollo  227 

Fire.  Walking  on:  259  471 

Fire  Worshippers  47 1 

Fish:  Singing  22  Men  changed 
to  /.  62  F.  oracles  270,  272 
Ground  /.  230  F.  guide  236 
Tame  /.  285,  367  Spg  born 
/.  469     Blind/.  482 

Fishing:  In  the  earth  230  In 
bed  481 

Fleet.  The  Grecian  135  287 

Flies:  Hercules  disperses  them  9 


Floating  dinner  dishes  466 
Flood.  Deucalion's:  Preface,  113, 

116 
Flora:  Senate-made  goddess  314 
Floralia:  Festival  of  flowers  314 
Flower-like   sheep   and    houses: 

484 
Flower  that  became  a  father  314 
Flowers:  All  of  one  color  at  first 

314 

Flowers  about  Springs  459 
Flute  playing  while  singing  242 

Minerva  and  the/.  246 
Flute  reed  1 55 
Fontinalia:  Preface 
Fortieth  parallel  of  Latitude  188 
Fortune's  wheel  90 
Fossils  46 

Franklin.  Benjamin  433 
Freaks:  (See  Africa  and  India) 

Mother  of  /.   46.    174     Men 

with   six   hands   222     Father 

of  Freaks  275 
Free  salt  and  fuel  for  travelers 

444 
Frogs:  Latona  changes  men  to/. 

269     Spring    produced    frogs 

468 
Fruit  censers  299 
Furies.  The:  118 
Furstenberg.  Princes  of  390 

Gades  382 

Gaea's  3000  sons  182 

Galatea  loved  by  Glaucus  175. 

487 
Galaxy.  The:  174 
Galba  448 
Gallati.  The:  180 
Galli:  Priests  251     Their  stone 

252 
Gallia  Narbonensis  378 
Gallus.     .(^lius;    misguided    347 
Ganga  398 

Ganges:  Legends  of  the  398 
Gangotri:  398 
Ganymede:  3.  174 
Garamantes.  The:  310 
Garden  of  the  Sun:  484 
"Garden  of  Zeus"  320 
Gargettus  93 


704 


INDEX  B 


Geese  save  Rome  432 

Genealogical  night-mares  83 

Genealogy :  A  source  of  53 

Genii  built  Petra  348 

George.  vSaint  480 

Georgian  landscape  278 

Geryon:  174  430  Geryon  oracle 
480 

Geryon's  oxen  383 

Geysers  488 

Ghost:  Euthymus  and  the  g. 
214^  215  g.  of  Remus  450 

Giant:  Bones  of  a  40.    Tityus  171 

Giants  with  dragons  for  feet  29 

Gibraltar  383 

Gibraltar  apes  304 

Gideon-like  ruse  169 

Giovanni  S.  483 

Glaciers  188  391 

Glass:  Malleable  332.  Dis- 
covered by  Phoenicians  355 

Glaucus  eaten  by  his  horses  136 

Glaucus  made  immortal  by  eat- 
ing grass  1 75 

Gluttony.     Phigalian  1 1 

Goat:  Amalthea  83 

Goat  sacrifices  136 

Goats  derived  from  Crete  301 

Goatherd:  Discovers  oracle  site 
164     Lycidas  the  g.  299 

Gods:  "Unknown"  73 

Gods:  Birthplace  of  the  first  200 
First  progeny  of  the  g.  257 

Gold  as  mortar  223 

Golden  calf  327  433 

Golden  Fleece  and  "Argo": 
no  159  183  197  175  222  223 
224  226  227  278  322  390  no 

Good  Luck's  disguises  90 

"Good  Morning"  town  470 

Gordian  knot  240 

Gordius  240  248 

Gorgons  3 1 2 

Graces:  The  g.  i  149  150  314 
A  continental  Grace  316 

Graft:  Hercules'  g.  95.  229 
Aqueduct  g.  429 

Grafting  monstrosities:  117 

Grafting.  Tree  i 

Grain  cultivation.  First  122 

Grasshopper  harp  string  214 


"Grasshopper's  Prize"  294 

Greeks.  Origin  of  the  188 

Grief.  Drowning  sounds  of  224 

Griffins  304 

Guides:  i  46  242  269 

Gum  Arabic  trees  325 

Gun  factory:  425 

Gunpowder  387 

Gyges  had  50  heads  257 

Gyraldus.  Lylius  264 

Hades:  Entrance  to  46.  48 
Shortest  route  to  57.  249 
Keys  of  281.  382  425  426 

Hadrian  (Adrian)  15  21  116  164 
183.     Destroys  a  fountain  364 

Hague  conference.  An  early  285 

Hairless  heads  and  hairy  bodies 

334 
Halcyon  days.  The  first  396 
Halcyone  396 
Halicarnassus  264 
Hall  of  Fame  453 
Ham  as  Memnon  326 
Hamilton.  Lady  486 
Hamilton's  Researches  236 
Hands:  Men  with  six  222 
Hannibal:  210  252  318     Where 

he     crossed     the     Alps     381 

Drowns  Senators  457.  463  471 
Haran  356 
Harmonia:  129     Her  origin  131 

Her  necklace  174 
Haroun  al  Raschid  364 
Harpies:  The  hounds  of  Zeus  278 
Harvest  every  month  3 1 5 
Hat:  Mexican  cooked  hat  82 
Hawk:  Tereus  changed  to  a  h. 

171 
Headache  cure  30  459 
Hebe  marries  Hercules  195 
Hecate:  426 
Hector:  129  134     Killed  Patro- 

clus  in  Achilles'   armor    181. 

189  190     Hector-Achilles  fight 

402 
Hedge  statuary  466 
Helen :  Marries  Theseus  55.    Her 

tomb  68.  402  435 
Helicon:  The  Muses'  mountain 

160 


INDEX  B 


705 


Hellas:  Homer's  name  for  Greece 
188 

Helle  and  the  Hellespont  159 

Hellen:  His  tomb  189 

Henri'  IV  371 

Henry.  Assassination  of  Prince 
Henry  473 

Hephaestus  (see  Vulcan) 

Hera:  Island  383 

Hera  (see  Juno) 

Heracleidjc  126 

Hercules:  Loves  Auge;  Father 
of  Evander  8  Eating  contest 
with  Lepreus;  The  Cormorant 
his  symbol  11  His  greatest 
exploit  II  Loves  Phialo  12 
6th  labor  (Stymphalian  birds) 
His  detractors  21  Wounds 
Chiron  22  Drives  flies  from 
Olympia  30  4th  labor  (Ery- 
manthian  boar)  32  1st  labor 
(Nemean  lion)  44  His  armor 
44  and  labor  (Hydra)  46 
His  labors  minimised  46.  48 
His  club  sprouts  49  Killed 
Dorceus  65  12th  labor  (Cer- 
berus) 73,  159,  322.  5th 
labor  (on  Augeus'  property) 
95  Cause  of  the  labors  126 
Number  of  his  children  126 
Drew  strength  from  Dirce's 
Spring  130.  156  170  Fifty- 
two  sons  born  the  same  day 
158  Kills  Nessus  for  holding 
Dejaneira  178  His  apotheo- 
sis; Marries  Hebe  195  Flirts 
with  lole  195  Kills  twenty- 
four  giants  216  Kills  the  six- 
handed  men  223  Loves  and 
loses  Hylas;  rows  "Argo" 
alone  226  Abandoned  by  the 
Argonauts  226  The  raft  he 
came  from  Tyre  on  241.  252 
His  Springs  284  Visits  oracle 
of  Ammon  313  nth  labor 
(Hesperides'  apples)  322  His 
name  an  anagram  355  Was  a 
Tyrian  355  His  son  Nemau- 
sus  378  His  Pillars  383  Size 
of  his  foot  394  Kills  the 
giant    Alcyonides    396     loth 


labor  (Geryon's  oxen)  430.  444 

485 

Hermaphroditus:  Changed  by 
Salmacis;  his  genealogy  264 

Hermes  (see  Mercury) 

Herod  352 

Herodotus:  His  chronology  107. 
212     His  birthplace  264.  399 

Hesiod:  83  His  bones  found  by 
a  crow  150.  158  H.  and  the 
Pierian  school  160  His  epi- 
tomes 312 

Hesperides:  312  322 

Hesperus:  The  garden  of  322 

Hiero.  King:  486 

Hieroglyphs:  355 

Hippius:  Applied  to  Poseidon  2 

Hippocentaurs  178 

Hippocrates:  His  birthplace;  the 
Father  of  Medicine  299 

Hippodamus:  First  maker  of 
right-angle  streets  212 

Hippolyta:    The     Amazon     48 

113 

Hippolytus:  Loved  by  Phsedra 
48.    49    50     Restored    to   life 

59-  434  441 

Hippomenes:  Raced  and  married 
Atalanta  75 

Historical  societies.  Ancient  129 

Holidays:  More  than  365  a  year 
216 

Homer:  19  83  Cause  of  his 
blindness  86  One  of  his  nods 
203  Mentions  Temesa  215 
His  study  238  His  caves  and 
rivers  249,  382.  397  First  to 
mention  Arethusa  279  His 
school-house  294  His  fore- 
sight 304  His  Hades  382. 
397  A  conundrum  the  cause 
of  his  death  399.  400 

Honey:  Mt.  Ida  h.  83  h.  dis- 
covered by  Melissa  303 

Hope.  Anthony  29 

Horace.  The  wine  makers'  poet 
130  His  canal  trip  449.  459 
460   474 

Horatius  Codes  474 

Horner.  Jack  46 

Horologium:    119 


7o6 


INDEX  B 


Horse:  "Wooden  h.  of  Troy  made 
of  cornel-tree  boards  65.  281 
Marine  horse  322 
Horses.  Man-eating:  89     Glau- 

cus  eaten  by  his  136 
Horse-flesh  eating  2 
Horse  sacrifice:  Bridled  60 
"Hounds  of  Zeus."     278 
Hours.  The:  i 
House  rent:  Ancient  114 
Hunting  scene  sculptures  365 
Hvergelmeer.  The  ice- well  188 
Hyades.   The:   Bacchus'   nurses 

147 

Hyantes.  The  129  188 

Hybreas  268 

Hydra:  h.  poison  22,  96.  h.  of 
Lerna  46  275 

Hydrophobia  cure  24 

Hylas:  Protdge  of  Hercules; 
abducted  by  a  nymph  226.  412 

Hymenagus:  Killed  on  his  wed- 
ding day;  restored  to  life,  59 

Hyperboreans  322 

Hypermnestra:  Saves  Lynceus 
46 

Hypsaeus:  Father  of  Cyrene  320 

Hypsipyle:  Slave  princess  44 

Hyrcynian  forest  391 

Hyrie  dissolved  1 76 

lacchus  (Bacchus)  147 

lapygia  216 

lapyx  210  216 

Iberians    locate    the    Pillars    of 

Hercules  383 
"Ibis":  Ovid's  invective  457 
Icarus  434 

Ice  Age.  The  great  188 
Idas  offers  to  fight  a  god  223 
Idmon  insults  Idas  223 
llythia  90 
India;  Freaks: 

Eyeless      people;      mouthless 
people  398 
Indians  of  North  America  312 

Inns.  Disappearing  250 

Ino:  Daughter  of  Cadmus;  be- 
comes a  prophetess  72  Bac- 
chus' nurse  147.  159 


Interest  at  12%  a  month  229 

Inventors  of  alphabets  325 

lo:  174.  277.  Changed  to  a  cow 

by  Zeus;  persecuted  by  Hera 

282 
lolaus:    Returns    to    life;    kills 

Eurystheus  126 
lole  flirts  with  Hercules  195 
Ion:  118     His  strange  life  120 
lonides.  The  nymphs  93 
Iphianassa  22 
Iphicles:  Hercules'  half  brother 

126 
Iphigenia:    Her  end  113  Saved 

from  sacrifice  135 
Iris  19 
Isis  496 
Island:  Lost  i.  241     Floating  i. 

298     Thera  formed  of  a  clod 

from  "Argo"  320     Ischia  426 

A  leafiike  i.  484 
Islands  of  The  Blest  175,  313 
Ister  river  390 

Itch:  The  i.  in  Darius'  army  208 
Itineraries.  Roman  371  374 
Ivory:  Its  preservation  59 
Ixion:     His     punishment     and 

progeny  178 

Jackstones:  480 

Jacob  356 

Jahun.  Saint  398 

Janus  432 

Japan  312 

Jason  (see  Golden  Fleece):  j.  and 
Medea;  crushed  by  "Argo's" 
stern  no  Seeks  the  Golden 
Fleece  159.  223  278 

Javelin  that  never  missed  124, 
281 

Jericho  350 

Jesus:  The  place  of  temptation 
350  353  354  434  His  foot- 
prints 438 

Jeweled  eels  357 

Jeweler.  The  dishonest:  486 

Jews  and  Domitian.  The  434 

Jiu  Jitsu  123 

Job  240 

John.  St.:  426 

John  the  Baptist  351  353 


INDEX  B 


707 


Jonah  349 

Joseph  324 

Journey:  A  winter  day's  170 

Jove  (see  Jupiter) 

Juba.   King:   His  residence  318 

His  views  about  the  Nile  323 
Judas  Iscariot  194 
Judging  past  eras:  no 
Julian:  163  266  Restores  oracle 

364 

Junius  210 

Juno  (Hera): 

19.  Persecutes  Callisto  20 
Swallowed  by  Saturn  21 
Zeus'  punishments  21  Re- 
virginated  yearly  58  Quar- 
rels with  Zeus  145  Her 
fatherless  son  278  Per- 
secutes lo  282  Her  birth- 
place 291  Result  of  her 
bath  357.  402  430  435 

Jupiter  (Jove)  (Zeus): 

His  birth  i  A  nurse  of  4  j. 
and  Callisto  20  How  he 
punished  Juno  21.  41  His 
birthplaces  83  Results  of 
his  carrying  off  ^gina  109 
j.  and  Europa  129,  131 
Succeeded  Saturn  257 
Three  hundred  Jupiters  268 
His  motherless  daughter 
Athena  278  Carries  off  lo 
282  With  Europa  in  Crete 
301  Melissa  his  nurse  303 
Wounds  Typhon  365.  435 

Jupiter  and  Thaleia  488 

Jurisprudence  117 

Jury:  The  first  _;.  of  twelve  114 

Justice:  Carneades'  view  of  139 

Juturna:  412  435 

Juvenal  434 

Elarnak  325 

Karttikeya:  The  Mars  of  India 

398 
"Kehama.  The  Curse  of":  457 
Kingfishers:  224     Halcyone  and 

Ceyx  changed  to  k.  396 
Kings  selected  by  height  335 
Kipling:    A    rag,  a  bone  and  a 

hank  of  hair  288 


Kiss:  The  first  recorded  k.  356 
Kitchen:     Foundation     of     the 

modem  484 
Kleptomaniacs  83 
Koran  188 

Labyrinth:  Of  Crete  48,  301  Of 
Memnon  326  474 

Lacedasmon  65 

Ladon  the  dragon  322 

"Lady  of  Letters.  The"  325 

Lselaps:  The  fleetest  dog  281 

Laestrygojies.  The  210 

Lais  loved  Diogenes  108 

Laius:  134 

Lake:  Avemus  412  Cephisis 
155.  170  Como  445  Con- 
stance 391  Copais  170  Cur- 
tian  429  Fucinus  461  Gen- 
eva 381  Lucrine  426  454  461 
Nemi  434,  441  Fergus  484 
Regillus  435     Tritonian  209 

Lampea:  32 

Lampetie:  Her  tears  formed 
amber  477 

Lanciani  434 

Lapithai  320 

Larache  312 

Lars  Porsenna's  tomb  474 

Lasso:  Used  by  Sarmatians  117 

Latinus.  King:  445 

Latona  (Leto):  235  Changes 
rustics  to  frogs  269  Gives 
birth  to  Apollo  in  Delos  298 

Laurea  TuUius  453 

Laurel  leaf  prophecies  164 

Lavinia  445 

Law:  Perjury  court  488 

Laws:  Curious  courts  115,  118 
First  written  /.  214  Simoni- 
des  I.  294 

League.  Achaean  loi 

League  of  Nations.  An  early:  321 

Leaves.  Sporting:  124 

Lebadea  137 

Leda's  unhatched  egg  65 

Legends  100 

Leitus:  The  only  Boeotian  leader 
not  killed  at  Troy  145 

Lemures:  Feast  and  rites  of  the 
450 


708 


INDEX  B 


Leonidas:  65  180 

Lepreus:  His  eating  contest  with 

Hercules  11 
Leprosy:  30.     Its  origin  93.  95 

Cure  for  96 
Leto  (see  Latona) 
Leucse  Islands  289 
Leucippus:  Loves  Daphne;  his 

ruse  31 
Leucothea  (Tno)  72 
Leucrocotta  304 
Leverrier's  prediction  304 
Libera  (Proserpine) 
Libya:  Ancient  Atrica  304 
Lice:  208,  216 

Lichas  finds  Orestes'  bones  10 
Licinius.  Lartius:  384 
Life:  Restored  to  life  59 
Lighthouse:  Pharos  331,  332 
Linus  160 

Lion:  Nemean  /.  haunt  44 
Lion  twenty  feet  long  295 
Literary  curiosity  299 
Livingstone  323 
Lixos  312 
Llamas  398 

Locusts:  Powdered  308 
Lombardy  481 
Lotophagi.  The  316 
Louis  XIV  109 
Louis  XV  378 

Lounges:  Resorts  of  gossips  165 
Love  philter  of  Nessus  178 
Lovers'  Leap.  The  124  288 
Lucan:  5 
"Lucile"  374 
Lucinus  Mucianus  gives  banquet 

in  a  tree  274 
Lucrine  lake  470 
LucuUus  429 
Luxor  325 

Luxury  of  Tarentum  216 
Lycaon:   Built   the   first   town; 

first  Grecian  colonies  founded 

by  his  sons;  changed  into  a 

wolf  19,  20,  188  210  216. 
Lyceum  121 

Lychas:  Finds  Orestes'  bones  10 
Lycidas    the   musical    goatherd 

299 
Lycomedes,  king  of  Cyros  281 


Lycosura:  Oldest  town  i 
Lycurgus:  Effect  ot  his  laws  10 
Lycurgus'  laws:  65 
Lycurgus:  Father  of  Opheltes  44 
Lycurgus:  Restored  to  life  59 
Lycus  marries  Dirce  130 
Lymata  13 
Lynceus:  Saved  by  Hypermnes- 

tra  46 
Lynceus:  His  penetrating  sight 

95     Could  see  through   trees 

322 
Lyre :  The  seven  stringed  298 
Lysander's  death  147 
Lysimachus'  novel  use  of  sewers 

236 
Lysimachus:  Fixed  water  rates 

283 
Lysippe  22 
Lysistrata:  Her  peculiar  scheme 

120 

Macae.  The  316 

Macaulay  435 

Macedonia  207 

Macrobii:  They  lived  120  years 

in  the  South  and  1000  years  in 

the  North  335 
Macrobili:  They  lived  400  years 

304 

Maecenas  459 

Maenads.  The  141  433 

Magnet:  Origin  of  its  name  235 

Magpies:  Pierus'  daughters 
changed  to  161 

Man:  Creation  of  171 

Mandeville.  Sir  John  73  117 

Manhattan  real  estate  210 

Mantichora  304 

Mantineia:   14 

Manto:Seeress  138  Her  strange 
marriage;  connection  with 
Homer  and  Virgil  239 

Marathon  race.  The  first:  120 

Marcellus.  .^Eseminus:  301 

Marcius.  Ancus:  461 

Mardonius:  140.  Fouled  Gar- 
gaphia's  .Spring  145  De- 
feated by  Pausanias  146 

Mareotic  wine  329 

Maro:  Companionof  Bacchus329 


INDEX  B 


709 


Marpesa:  Widow;  leader  of 
women  soldiers  8 

Marrana  brook:  434 

Mars  (Ares):  Rescues  Death  109 
Defendant  in  first  murder 
trial  118  131.  His  island  278. 
398 

Mars.  The  Indian  398 

Marseilles  237 

Marsh:  Alcyonian  139  Posei- 
don's 62 

Marsyas:  His  flutes'  long  voy- 
age 53  Odd  music  match 
with  Apollo  242  Finds  Min- 
erva's flutes  246 

Martial:  Why  he  left  Rome  446 
His  dinner  menus  446,  473 

Matapan.  Cape  73 

Mausolus'  ashes  consumed  by 
his  widow  264 

Mead.  Sweet:  Prehistoric  rum 
223  226 

Meat  trees  74 

Mecca  for  the  married.  A  100 

Medea:  Tries  to  poison  Theseus 
55  Causes  death  of  Pelias  92 
Her  victims  no.  m.  and  the 
Golden  Fleece  159  Her  en- 
chantments  278 

Medical  recipes.  Curious:  24,  453 

Medicine:  117  Diet  better  than 
^-  397     w-  ™en  138 

Mediterranean:  Covered  Africa 
326     Its  tide  333 

Medusa:  The  eflects  of  her  blood 
59  Her  death  led  to  the 
flute's  invention  242.  306  349 

Megalopolis  40 

Megara:  Wife  of  Hercules  46 

Megasthenes  founds  Cumas  285 

Megistias:  Predicts  defeat  at 
Thermopylae  180 

Meilanion  75 

Melampus:  Cures  Proetus' 
daughters;  Names  melampo- 
dium  22.  96 

Melcarth:    Phoenician    Hercules 

355 
Meleager:    His    spear    53    Kills 
Calydonian   boar    174     What 
his  life  depended  on  182 


Melesigenes  (Homer)  399 
Melissa  discovers  honey  303 
Melissaj.  The  303 
Melisseus  king  of  Crete  303 
Memnon  326 

Memory  system.  An  early  196 
Memphis  subways  327 
Menelaus:  Fondness  for  planting 

trees  26     His  house  at  Sparta 

65     His  tomb  68     Binds  Pro- 
teus 410a 
Menes:    First    mortal    monarch 

326 
Mera  22 
Mercury  (Hermes): 

The    gift    he    bestowed    on 
woman  i     His  birth  3     m. 
and  the  alphabet  325.  408 
Merops:     Soothsayer,     king    of 

Rhyndacus  223.  299 
Metagenes;     (see    Pherecrates) : 

His  fantastic  Springs  211 
Metamorphosis  Pref. 
Metanira  123 
Metempsychosis  Pref. 
Metis  rescues  Hera  21 
Metra:  Sold  for  food  260 
Mettus'  camp:  434 
Mexican  eatable  hat  82 
Midas:    Makes   gold    by    touch 

240     Music  match  referee,  his 

ears  242.  248 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream:  48 

361 
Miletus:  265  267 
Milk-giving  trees  383 
Millet's      description      of      the 

Danube  390 
Mills:  Inventor  of  69 
Mills  of  Argos  54 
Milo:  His  strength  and  voracity 

214 
Miltiades:  114 
Milton:  20 
Miner^^a  (Athena)  (Pallas): 

I.  Her  wonderful  birth  5 
Her  bed  8  Wounded  by 
Theutis  41  47  Tames  Pe- 
gasus 109  Disputes  Athens' 
protectorate  with  Poseidon: 
loses  through  the  women's 


7IO 


INDEX  B 


Minerva — Continued 

vote;  her  olive  tree  114,  115. 
Bribes  the  Semrice  118 
Visits  the  Muses  161.  174 
222  Invents  the  flute  and 
is  laughed  at  242,  246  In- 
structs Ulysses  279,  410. 
402  408 

Minos:  301 

Minotaur:  50  298  301 

Mints  of  oracles  266 

Minyas:   His   massive   treasury 
150 

Mirror  balancing:  98 

Misfortunes  lockstep  20 

Mississippi  84 

Mithridates:  Unpoisonable  232 

Mochus  355 

Moero:  Poetess  83 

Moliere  109 

Moly  plant  19  20 

Money:  Ox-impressed  50  433 

Monks.  Trappist:  439 

Monoceros.  The  304 

Monocoli.  The:  Were  one-legged 

304 
Monster    "Punishment."    The: 

281 
Monstrosities    (see    Africa    and 

India) 
Monte  Nuovo:  426 
Moods  of  Nature  231 
Moon:  Younger  than  Arcadians 

I 
Moore.  Thos:  Castalia   164  m. 

and  Stratonicus  268     Ammon 

313 
Moors:  Whence  they  came  312 
Mopsus:     Soothsayer,     son     of 

Manto     138     His    prediction 

contest  with  Calchas  239 
Morea:  Meaning  of  I.  30 
Morocco  coast  312 
Morpheus  396 
Moses:   Preface   I    210  m.   and 

the  Nile  Spring  323.  433  434 
Mother  of  Springs  445 
Mother  of  the  gods  252 
Motherless  daughter  of  Zeus  278 
Motion  pictures  73 
M.P.  371 


Mouse:  Teiresias  changed  to  a 

138 
Mucianus.  Lucinius  274 
Mulberries:  Why  they  are  black 

361 
Muleteer  becomes  king  90 
Muncaster.  Lord  139 
Murder  trial.  The  first  117 
Musasus:  Ancient  aviator  114 
Muse:  Tenth  288 
Muses:  129     First  home  of  160. 

207     Their    number;    contest 

with    Pierus'    daughters    161 

Their    favorites     162     Erato; 

Calliope  462 
Museum.  Open  air:  129 
Music:  m.  Girls  of  Corinth  109 

Came  from  Asia  200     Of  the 

Spheres  207     Cooking  to  tn. 

2 1 1     Flogging  to  m.  2 1 1    First 

taught  by  birds  230 
Mycenae:  Oldest  town  in  Argolis 

45 
Myles:  Inventor  of  mills  69 
Myrmidons  281 
Myrrhina  120 

Myszeum  7 -day  festivals  102 
Mysteries  in  every  age  383 
Mythology:     Religion     of     the 

Greeks  preface. 

Nabatseans  348 

Naiades.  The  281 

Naiads  Pref. 

Nameless  people  311 

Name  similarities  83 

Name  transference:  51  160  200 

207 
Naples  412  455 
Napoleon  333 
Narcissus:    138     Changed   to  a 

flower  157 
Nasamones.  The  306  308 
Nature:  Her  compensations  24 

Her  art  159     Her  moods  231 

Her  debt  393 
Nature  fakirs:  22 
Nauplia's  vicissitudes  58 
Nausicaa  409 

Naval  victory  with  snakes  457 
Neanthus  buys  Orpheus'  lyre  207 


INDEX  B 


fit 


■"Near"  pears  446 

Negro:  Cause  of  his  color  477 

Nelson    waters    fleet    at    Are- 

thusa's  Spring  486 
Nemean  games:  Origin  of  44 
Nemean  lion's  haunt  52 
Nemesis:  44  157 
Neologists  136 
Nephele  forsaken  by  Athamas 

159 

Neptune  (Poseidon): 
Where  reared  2,  7  His  con- 
nection with  horses  2 
Assists  Amymone  46.  58  60 
His  law  case  with  Minerva 
114,  115  Sues  Mars  117, 
118  Dispute  with  Apollo 
about  Corinth  257  His 
residence;  his  horses  282 
Throws  an  island  300 

Neptune:  Planet  304 

Nereides.  The  281 

Nereus:  62 

Nereus  and  Doris  281 

Nero:  46  139  Sacrifices  an  ass 
to  Apollo  163  n.  and  the 
Nile  323.  372  433  His  mother 
as  Madonna  438.  472 

Nessus:  Makes  Herciiles  jealous 
178.  195  214 

Nestor:  Lived  7  generations  59 

News:  Negligible  129 

Newspapers  and  traditions  129 

Nice  378 

Nicholas  V:  440 

Nicomedes  261 

Nightingale:  i6i  Philomela 
turned  to  a  n.  171.  201 

Nimes  378 

Nimrod  366 

Ninus:  His  tomb  i  1-4  mile  high 

369 

Niobe:  Her  mountain  statue  159 
Turned  to  stone  235,  412 

Noah:  Preserved  no  monsters  46 
His  ark  188 

Noiseless  city.  A  2 1 1 

Noraghes:  Sardinia's  mysteries 
500 

Numa:  400  433  434  435  436  441 

Nuns:  94 


Nysa:  Where  Bacchus  was  bom 
147 

Oak:  The  talking  183 

Obelisks  327 

Ocean:  Artesian  well  in  the  0. 

355 

Ocean:  Keeps  the  Bear  thirsty 
20 

Oceanides  281 

Oceanus  had  3000  children  281 

Odeium:  1 16 

Odescalchi  family  472 

Odysseus  (see  Ulysses) 

CEdipus:  119  129  130  134  171  281 

(Enotrus:  Founds  first  Grecian 
colony  20.  210  212  285 

Ogygus:  129.  Autochthonal 
king  of  Grecian  Thebes  135. 
188 

Ointment:  89,  223 

Oldest  town:  i,  44,  45 

Old  man  of  the  sea  62 

Olympia:  90  486 

Olympias:  29 

Olympic  festivals:  90  The  presi- 
dency 91 

Olympus.  Mt.:  i  188  200  242 

Omphale:  Enslaves  Hercules  44 

444 
Oneirocrisy  53 
Onesicritus  397 
Opheltes:  Devoured  by  a  dragon 

44 

Oracle:  Riddles  90  Ceremonies; 
odd  answers  99  Orders  mur- 
der 148  Oldest  o.  163  0. 
propaganda  321 

Oracles:  53  139  Apollo's  at 
Delphi  163,  164.  177  Decline 
of  266  As  mints  266  Fish  o. 
271,  272  Replies  by  nods 
and  signs  313 

Oracular  uncertainty  10 

Orestes:  His  bones  found  in  a 
well;  His  coflSn  11  feet  long 
ID  His  path  and  its  monu- 
ments 40.  44  48  62  119 

Original  baptismal  font  333 

Orontes  365 

Oropus:  139 


712 


INDEX  B 


Orpheus:  6.  o.  and  the  Sirens 
182  Brought  music  from  the 
East  188  Torn  to  pieces  by 
women  200  His  tomb  and 
the  birds  201  Still  sang  after 
beheading  207  His  lyre  207 
Saved  by  Apollo  218  Soothes 
the  Argonauts  223  In  the 
Hesperides'  garden  322 

Orthus:  Progeny  of  Typhon  275 

Ortygia:  30,  486 

Osiris:  His  tomb  326  327 

Oslerism  294 

Osogo.  The  god  268 

Ossa.  Mt.  199 

Ostriches  320 

Ostrich-skin  armor  316 

Outwitting  oracles  168 

Ovid:  His  "Ibis"  curse;  his 
banishment  and  death  457 
His  country  461  Hishouse462 

Owl  484 

Oxylus:  Three-eyed  king  90  268 

Pactyas:  Absconder,  the  price  of 

Chios  219 
Paderewski  242 
Padua:  480 

Painting:  Birthplace  of  108 
Palamedes:  Adds  to  the  alphabet 

295 
Palici.  The  488 
Palladium  174 

Pallas:  Murdered  by  Theseus  48 
Pallas:  Friend  of  Minerva  174 
Pallas  (see  Minerva) 
Pamphila:   Invents   transparent 

dresses  299 
Pamphos  123  157 
Pan:  His  birth  and  odd  form  4. 

32  120  164 
Panama  Canal  333 
Pandora:  The  first  woman  i  107 
Panopeus  quarreled  before  birth 

171.  294 
Papal  decree  geography:  475 
Papyrus:  485 
Parasang.  The  367 
Paris:  Flight  with  Helen  62.  1 12 

Place  where  his  beauty  prize 

was  awarded  225.  281  402 


Parnassus.  Mt. :  Preface  160 

Parsley  for  prizes  44 

Parthenon.  The:  114,  115 

Pasiphs  301 

Pasteur  24 

Patents  46  82 

Patriotism  fostered:  129 

Patroclus:  79  Fatalities  in  his 
pastimes  181  Borrows  Achil- 
les, armor  203  Kills  Pyraech- 
mes  203 

Paul.  St.:  At  Athens  118.  119 
At  Ephesus  237.  247  251  272 
His  birthplace  277.  433  439 

Pausanias  preface.  His  skepti- 
cism 73 

Pausanias:  Clears  Greece  of  the 
Persians  146 

Peacock:  174  Given  Argus' 
eyes  282 

Pegasus:  48  His  taming  109 
Rebukes  Hellicon's  excitement 
161  Produced  from  Medusa's 
blood  306 

Peirene:  109 

Peisander:  Hercules'  historian  46 

Peisistratus:  An  English  114 

Pelasgi.  The:  188 

Pelasgians.  The:  116  470 

Pelasgus:  Settled  Arcadia  20.  188 

Peleus:  Kills  his  father-in-law 
181     Father  of  Achilles  281 

Pelias:  Boiled  by  his  daughters 
92 

Pelias  no 

Pelion:  Piling  p.  on  Ossa  199 

Peloponnesus  giant:  84 

Pelops:  Founded  Pisa  91  from 
Phrygia  188 

Pelops'  Isle:  i 

Penelope:  Her  last  days;  Ulysses' 
cruelty  16.     65  410 

Pentheus:  Torn  to  pieces  by  his 
mother  141 

Pepper  and  honey  drink :  348 

Perdiccas:  Receives  sunshine  as 
wages  202 

Peripatetics  121 

Perjury  among  the  gods:  19 

Perjury  court:  488 

Perke:  207 


INDEX  B 


713 


Perseus:  Founds  Mycense  44 
Kills  grandfather  at  quoits  45. 
242  Slays  Medusa  306 
Visits  Ammon  313  Father  of 
Erythras  346  Rescues  An- 
dromeda 349 

Persuasion:  Goddess  i 

Peters.  St.:  447 

Peter.  St.:  His  statue  438.  447 

Petra:  Built  by  Genii  348 

Phaedra:  and  Hippolytus:  Her 
end  48 

Phasthusa :  Her  tears  form  amber ; 

477 

Phaeton:  477 

Phalanthus:  Sees  rain  from  a 
clear  sky  216  His  end  and 
monument  460 

Phantasmos :  Sleep'sassistant  396 

Phaon:  Cause  of  Sappho's  death 
288 

Pharos  331  332 

Pheidippides:  First  Marathon 
racer  120 

Pherecrates  (see  Metagenes) : 
His  fantastic  Springs  74 

Pherecydes:  An  early  seismolo- 
gist 24 

Phialo:  Loved  by  Hercules  12 

Phidias:  5  Adorns  the  Par- 
thenon 1 1 4 

Philetus:  Light  weight  poet  299 

Philip  Amyntas:  Loses  his  right 
eye  203 

Philip  II:  His  bribery  27  A 
scrap  of  paper  diplomatist  204 

Philomela:  (see  Procne)  171 

Philomelus:  173 

Phineus:  and  the  Harpies  278 

Phobetor:  Sleep's  assistant  396 

"Phocian  resolution"  169 

Phocus:  130  Killed  by  a  brother 
181  A  wolf  avenges  his  death 
281 

Phoenicia:  Knowledge,  inven- 
tions, discoveries,  colonies  of 

355 
Phoenicians:  188 
Phormio's  inhospitality:  65 
Phrixus:    Receives    the    Golden 

Fleece  159 


Phrygia:  Older  than  Egypt  188 
Its  language  the  first  188 

Phryne:  Her  birthplace,  wealth 
and  beauty  158  Her  solid 
gold  statue  164 

Phryxos  (see  Phrixus) 

Physicians:  Sickness  fostered  by 

.214. 

Pickwick:  An  ancient  481 

Pictures  made  with  stars:  167 

Piera:  90 

Pierus  and  the  Muses  161 

Pigmies.  The:  304  398 

Pig  pets  136 

Pilgrimage:  A  six  year  398 

Pilgrims'  Rock  of  Greece  60 

Pillars  of  Hercules:  312 

Pindar:  His  odes  44  p.  and 
Horace  130  Buried  in  a 
hippodrome  134  p.  and  the 
bees  134 

Pine  cones  as  food  82 

Pinolas  82 

Piper:  Peter  160 

Pirates'  haven  331 

Pirithous  48 

Pisa:  Leaning  tower  468 

Pisatis.  The:  91 

Plagiarism  83 

Plants  that  indicate  water  below 

24 
Plato:    114     His  Academy    116 
His  tolerance  147     His  Atlan- 
tis   312     His    debt    to    India 

397  453 
Plato:  Comic  poet  128 
Plautus:  His  comedies  109 
Pleiades:  AfiFect  a  fountain  278 
Pliny    (Elder):    Enumerator    of 
many    Springs     His    procras- 
tination 384     An  early  Pick- 
wick  481 
Pliny  (Younger) :  His  villas  229, 
445,   447,   466,   481    describes 
Clitumnus  476 
Pluto:  Entrance  to  his  realm  46 
Feared    .(^sculapius    59     His 
pasturage  382.  426  484  485  486 
Plutonium  251 

Plymouth  Rock:  The  Greek  60 
Poesas :  Lights  Hercules'pyre  195 


714 


INDEX  B 


Poets:  Boeotian  i6o 

Poisoned  marriage  robe  no 

Pollux :  (see  also  Castor) 

Fights  with  Amycus  227.  435 

Polo:  Marco  117 

Polybotes:  The  giant  over- 
whelmed by  Poseidon  300 

Polynices:  His  animated  shield 
136 

Polypemon  48 

Polyphemus  487 

Pomegranate  484 

Pompeii:  458.  481 

Pompey :  Secures  Mithridates 
treasures  232.  475 

Pomptine  marshes  449 

Pont  du  Gard  378 

Pontica:  (Bithynia)  229 

Pontus  Euxinus:  (Black  Sea) 

Porsenna  (see  Lars) 

Porta:  Capena,  San  Sebastiano 
434     Viminalis  432 

Poseidon  (see  Neptune) 

Posides:  452 

Posidippus:  His  epigram  288 

Posilipo:  426  455 

Prasneste:  429  440 

Praxiteles:  His  statue  of  Hera 
145.  158  His  gold  statue  of 
Phryne  164  His  Cnidian 
Venus  261 

Prayer:  Stops  wind  89  An- 
swered 281 

Pre-glacial  inhabitants:  188 

Prehistoric:  Fossils  188  Pirates' 
rum  223 

Prioress  outwitted:  94 

Prizes  of  parsley :  44 

Procne:  Her  tongue  is  cut  out  by 
Tereus;  reveals  the  crime  by 
embroidery;  feeds  Tereus  with 
his  son;  is  changed  into  a 
swallow  171 

Procris:  Her  jealousy  and  the 
result  124 

Procrustes:  His  bed  of  torture 
48 

Prodicus  86 

Proetus  22  96 

Program  of  the  Ages.  The:  484 

Progress:  Train  of  1 14 


Prometheus:  Punished  for  theft 

107     His  punishment  278 
Proserpine  48  484  485  496 
Proteus:     Could     assume     any 

form  281     Bound  by  Mene- 

laus  399 
Psamathe's  enchantments  281 
Psammitichus:       Raised       Nile 

Spring  discoverers  323 
Psylli:    Snake   proof;    fight   the 

South  Wind  306 
Ptcempha.  The:  Had  a  dog  king 

304 
Ptolemy:  His  courage  52.  345 
Punjab  397 
Puteoli    453 
Pylades  132 
Pylenor  96 
Pyraschmes:  Killed  by  Patroclus 

203 
Pyramia  60 

Pyramids:  77  288  325  327 
Pyramus  and  Thisbe:  361 
Pyrrha  (see  Deucalion) 
Pyrrhus:  Defeat  of  210 
Pythagoras:  Three  of  the  name 

291 

Quail  bay  73 
Queen  cooks  202 
Quinzy  cure  392 
Quoit:  An  historical  281 
Quo  Vadis  church  434  438 
Quo  Vadis?  Domine:  434 

Rabbit's  foot  superstition  480 

Rahab  350 

Rain  producers:  1 

Ramayana  398 

Rameses  323  326 

Rasselas  315 

Ray :  Ultra  violet  424.     X-ray  95 

Reforms:  Political  114 

Regillus.  Lake:  435 

Relativity:  231 

Relayed  presents:  298 

Remus:  His  ghost  450 

Renan  352 

Resurrection.  The:  428 

Retreat  of  the  10,000  Greeks  367 

Rex.  Q.  Marcius:  461 


INDEX  B 


7*5 


Rhacias:  Marries  Man  to  at  sight 

239 

Rhadamanthus :  426 

Rhampsinitus  137 

Rharian  plain:  133 

Rhea  (see  Cybele)  i  2  7  13  163 

Aids  the  Argonauts  224.  326 
Rhine:   Had    12,000   tributaries 

391 
Rhone:  Bathed  in  Lake  Geneva 

381 

Rhone  canal  453 

Rhyndacus:  Ruled  by  Merops 
222 

Richest  man  266 

Riddle:  Sphinx's  R.  129  R. 
solved  by  Phalanthus  216 
Homer's  death  riddle  399 

River:  Disappearing  13,  54  As 
a  common  carrier  30  r.  Trust 
30  One  of  the  coldest  41. 
Sea-going  r.  51  r.  of  Doubt 
53  Reincarnation  of  a  r.  53 
f.  of  soup  74  Deadly  r.  96 
Of  bad  odor  96  Doctored  r. 
168  r.  floating  on  another 
l94i  359  Brushed  aside  the 
sea  243  Most  tortuous  246 
A  r.  sued  246  Continuous 
waterfall  353  Most  rapid  r. 
381     Largest  Italian  r.  477 

Rivers  and  poet's  births  399 

Rivers:  Grecian  402 

Robe:  A  poisoned  marriage  robe 
no.     A  $120,000.  robe  211 

Rocs:  21 

Roman  insignia:  469 

Roman  itineraries  371 

Roman  remains  at  Bath  370 

Romans:  Homes  and  lives  of  481 

Rome:  Elevators  327  Civil  war 
387  Its  nebula  412  Founda- 
tion date  429  The  Forum 
430.  435,  438  Gates  432,  434, 
436  Its  geese  432  Its  noises 
434, 446  Center  of  438  Foun- 
tains 440  Captured  by  Gauls 
470     Taken  by  Porsenna  474 

Rome's  aqueducts:  429 

Rome's  strangely  changing  water 
429 


Romulus:  431  433  438  450 
Roses:  Of  Paestum;  Sixty  leaved 

202 
Roumelia  207 
Rum:  Ancient  223 
Russia  113 
Ruth  350 

Sabine:  Rape  431     s.  tract  465 
Sacrifices.    Human:    20   29    136 

488 
Saffron  scented  theaters  275 
Sagara.  king  398 
Sagittarius:  Constellation  160 
"Sagras.  Battle  of  the"  214 
Sagus  eat  pre-chewed  food  211 
Salamanders  poison  Wells  24 
Salmacis  264 
Salmoneus:    His    sacrilege    and 

death    92 
Salt:    Mines     15     Houses    307 

Preservative  333 
Samson  214 

Samson-like  Perseus:  48 
Sancho  Panza:  434 
Sanctuary.  Slave:  488 
San  Paolo:  439 
Sappho:  124     Her  character,  her 

brother,  her  end  288 
Saracens  210  213 
Sardonic  grin  500 
Sarmatians:  Their  dragon-scale 

armor  117.  395 
Saturn  (Cronus): 

2.     Deceived  by  Rhea  7,  163, 

164     Swallows  Hera  21     Can- 
nibalistic 83  257 
Satyr:  46  5.  captured  by  Midas 

258 
Satyrs  of  Africa  304 
Saul  131 

Scamandronymus  288 
SchaflFhausen  Falls  391 
Schlemihl.  Peter  i 
Science's   sight      and      Fable's 

memory  426 
Scipio  318  434 

Sciron:  Changed  to  rocks  113 
Scopas:  Architect  8 
Scopas:  Punished  by  Castor  and 

Pollux  196 


7i6 


INDEX  B 


"Scrap    of    paper"    diplomacy: 

27  475 
Scylla  487 

Scythia:  394  395  398 
Sea:  Asleep  224.     Dining  in  the 

445 
Sea:  Place  of  retirement  for  the 

sea:  426 
Seasons.  The:  314 
Seed  of  the  Trojan  War  281 
Seers  138 
Selemnus:  Deceived  by  Argyra 

100 
SelH:  The  priests  183 
Semele:46     Eats  Bacchus' heart 

^47 
Semiramis:  Gains  the  throne  by 

a     ruse    369     Preserved     by 

doves  369 
Seneca  206 

Sequester:  Vibius  209 
Serpent-proof  PsyUi.  The:  306 
Servia  207 

Sesostris  and  the  Suez  Canal  333 
Seven  against  Thebes  44 
Seven  sleepers.  The  237 
Sex  change  138 
Shadowless:  Groves  i     Men  I 
Shakespeare:  48  164  238  475 
Sheep:  Their  color  changed  155 

191  192  282 
Shelley.  P.  B.:  and  Arethusa  486 
Shells  from  the  sky  383 
Shepherd:  Selemnus  100     Finds 

Marsyas'  flutes  53 
Sibyl :  426     700  years  old  442 
Sibyls  164 

Sicily:  Its  ancient  name  210  484 
Sickness  prohibited  298 
Siculi.  The:  210  484 
Sidero  92 

Sieve:  Drawing  water  with  a  46 
Sight:  Lynceus'  sharp  sight  322 
Sight  restored:  Phormio's  241 
Silenus:    His    appearance    and 

reverses      202.      240     Made 

drunk  by  Midas  248 
Silphium  320 

Silversmiths:  Opposed  Christian- 
ity 237 
Similia  similibus  curantur  8 


Simonides:  Gratitude  of  Castor 
and  Pollux  196  His  epigram 
294     Adds   to    the  alphabet 

295 

Sinai.  Mt.:  108  345  433 

Singing  taught  by  birds  325 

Sinus:  His  treatment  of  travelers 
48 

Sirens:  Misjudged    82.  484 

Sisera  180 

Sisyphus:  108  Cause  of  his 
punishment  109  He  fetters 
Death  109 

Siva  398 

Skepticism:  Undermines  hea- 
thenism 266 

Slave  insurrection:  212  215  488 

Slaves:  10,000  sold  daily  298 
Stone  seat  to  free  slaves  449 

Sleep :  King  of  5.  his  home  396 

Small  boy:  The  84 

Smindyrides:  Had  1,000  kitchen 
slaves  211 

Snake-footed  giants:  216 

Snake:  Obtains  perpetual  youth 
171 

Snakes:  Catablepas  killed  with 
its  gaze  305  Basilisk  305,  306 
Amphisbaena  had  two  heads 
305  Sepses  306  Dipsas  306 
334  398     As  war  weapons  457 

Sniff:  480 

Socialism  in  India  397 

Sodom  and  Gomorrha  353 

Sogdiana  266 

Solfatara.  The:  426 

Solon:  114 

Solon's  stratagem  168 

Somnus:  King  of  sleep  396 

Sophanes'  anchor-valor  146 

Sophocles:  44  50  114  130 

Sorcerer's  garlic  19 

Sorrows  of  History,  Science  and 
Art  332 

Sortes.  Divination  by:  470  480 

Soup  rivers  74 

South  America  312 

Southey  457 

South  Pole  323 

Sow.  Crommyon  30 

Spa  380 


INDEX  B 


717 


Spanish  tract  in  French  territory 

387 

Sparta  65 

Spartacus:  His  insurrection  and 
end  212.  215 

Specific  Gravity  and  Arethusa: 
486 

Specter's  statue  chained  150 

Sperthies'  heroism  66 

Sphinx:  Its  riddle  129  Progeny 
of  Typhon  275  Avenged  by  a 
fox  281 

Spiders:  130 

Sponge:  Land  hke  a  petrified  482 

Sporades  islands  291  300 

Springs  (see  Index  A) 

Stadia:  Length  of;  Preface. 

Stanley  323 

Star  stories  (see  Constellations) 

Stars:  Their  pictures  159,  167 

Statielli  tribe  sold  as  slaves:  478 

Statue  bathing:  47  470 

Statues:  Black  28  When  first 
made  of  metal  65  At  first  of 
unhewn  stone  99  Of  gold 
108,  164  (Colossal:  Athena's 
114  Thebes'  325  Memphis 
327)  Of  a  specter  150  Of 
wood  173  Made  of  living 
animals  218,  281  Strength 
giving  s.  249  Hedge  5.  466 
Heathen  s.  for  Saints  438 
Rock-cut   496 

Stealing  town-sites:  216  238 

Stephanus:  Martial  uses  his 
bath   446 

Stephen.  Saint  383 

Stone:  First  statues  were  unhewn 
s.  99  "The  fugitive  Stone" 
222 

Stone  of  the  Galli  252 

Stories  in  the  stars  (see  Constel- 
lations) 

Stratonicus:  His  wit  204  207  268 

Strength-giving  statue  249 

Strophius:  Father  of  Pylades  132 

Stuttering  cured  by  fright  320 

Stymphalian  birds  21  278 

Suez  Canal  333 

Suffrage:  Female  114 

Suffragettes:  Lysistrata  120 


Sulla  86  163  286 

Sun  dial:  First  Roman  497 

Sungold:  Paying  in  202 

Superstition  183 

Sura.  Licinius  481 

Susarion:   First   comedy   writer 

113 
Swallow:  Procne  changed  to  a 

5.  171 
Swan:  Dircean  130     Singing  298 
Swords:  Digging  Wells  with  387 
Sybarites  210  211  216 
Syenite  324 
Sylvanus  431 
Symplegades :      The      swinging 

rocks  no 
Syracuse  485  486 
Syrtes.  The:  316 

Taaut  325 

Tadpoles  228 

Tali  480 

Talking  oak.  The  281 

Tang-hi:  Seeks  the  Ganges'  Spg 
398 

Tangier  312 

Tantalus  235 

Tarcon:  Born  gray  haired  444 

Tarpeia  and  Tatius  431 

Tarquin  470 

Tarracina:  448  449 

Tartarus"  Location  257.  484 

Tatius  431 

Tauri.  The  395 

Tears:  Formed  amber  477 

Tegeans:  Bound  with  their  own 
fetters  10 

Teiresias:  130  134  Changed  sex 
and  genus;  dissatisfied  Juno's 
inquisitiveness;  lived  seven 
generations  138,  139.  141 
Blinded  by  Minerva  161.  239 
430 

Telamon:  Friend  of  Achilles  267 

Teleclus:  Odd  conquest  of  Amy- 
else  67 

Telemachus:  His  visit  to  King 
Menelaus  410*  410'' 

Telephus:  Saved  from  the  sea; 
becomes  a  king  8 

Telescoping  trees  315 


7i8 


INDEX  B 


Tempe:  Vale  of  193 

Temple:  Robberies  8,  163  The 
best  preserved  /.  in  Greece  13 
Largest  i.  122  T".  roped  to  a 
city  237 

Tereus  (see  Procne)  171 

Terra  d'Otranto  210  216 

Terrestrial  Paradise  107 

Terrors  incognita  96 

Terrors  of  the  Indian  voyage  334 

Tethys  had  3000  children  281 

Thaleia  and  Zeus  488 

Thales:  His  debt  to  India  397 

Thamyris:  Cause  of  his  blind- 
ness 86 

Thanksgiving  festival  147 

Thargelion  month  298 

Theagenes:  Early  Bolshevik  113 

Theagenes:  Killed  by  a  statue 

115 
Theano:  and   Hippodamus   212 

A  poetess  214 
Theater:  98,  275 
Thebes      (Egyptian):     Had     7 

million  inhabitants  325 
Thebes  (Grecian)  129     Its  gates 

130 
Thefts:  Heirs  liable  for  114 
Themis:  Justice  163  281 
Themistocles:  114 
Theocritus:  /.  &  Peisander  46. 

412  413 

Theodorus:  First  metal  statue 
maker  65 

Theodosius  122  163 

Theophrastus  397 

Theopompus  183 

Thermopylae:  44 

Theseus:  Emulated  Hercules; 
humorously  destroyed  mon- 
sters; went  to  Hades  for 
Proserpine;  had  many  wives; 
married  Antiope  the  Amazon 
Deserted  Ariadne  48  Married 
Helen;  escaped  poisoning  by 
Medea  55  Destroyed  Sciron 
113  Killed  Cercyron;  raised 
wrestling  to  an  art  123  His 
ship  the  "Theoris"  298  De- 
stroyed the  Minotaur  301 

Thessaly  68  188 


Thestius.  King  11 

Thetis:  Mother  of  Achilles  281 

Theutis:  Fired  the  first  shot  in 

the  Trojan  campaign  41 
Thirst:  Tortures  caused  by  387 
Thirteen  wicked  cities  353 
Thisbe   361 
Thisoa:  i,  41. 
Thoas:  King  of  Lemnos  44 
Thrace:   Road   to   Europe    188. 

200    201     Many    boundaries 

and  names  207     Its  language 

lost  207 
Thraso  the  statuary  280 
Three-eyed  monarch  90 
Three  hundred  fold  yield  316 
Thucydides:  Death  of  225 
Thyestes:  Fed  with  his  children 

45 
Thyia  festival  290 
Thyiades:  The  revels  of  the  166 
Thyrsus.  The:  82 
Tibareni:  Their  strange  custom 

278 
Tiberius'  gold  dice  480 
Tibertus:    Son    of    Amphiaraus 

447 

Tibur  463 

Time  system  of  the  Romans  287 

Time:  The  corridor  of  i  The 
perspective  of  1 56  His  adorn- 
ing touch  378 

Timon  of  Athens  114 

Tin  Gow  480 

Tips:  Stips  472 

Tiresias  (see  Teiresias) 

Titans:  They  cook  Bacchus  147 
Had  50  heads  and  100  arms 

257 
Tithonus:  Changed  to  a  cricket 

326 
Titus  431 

Tityus:  Size  of  his  grave  171 
Tivoli  429  442  463 
Tortillas:   313 
Toth:  325.     His  wife  325 
Town:  A  real  58 
Towns:  Migrating  140 
Toy  painting  380 
Traditions  vary:  Preface.  51 
Tragedy's  slip  462 


INDEX  B 


719 


Trajan:  229  320  472 

Trambelus  267 

Transparent  coffins  335 

Treasury  of  Minyas  150 

Trebizond    29 

Tree:  Grafting  I  The  oldest  26 
Banquet  held  in  a  /.  274  The 
poplar,  its  fruit  and  cures  303 
Milk  giving  tree  383 

Trees:  17  99  135  136  164  Tele- 
scoping ^  315  The  Hesperi- 
des  change  to  /.  322 

Trevi  440 

Trieste  482 

Triopas:  260 

Triptolemus:  98  1 16  Aids  Ceres 
122  Is  taught  how  to  culti- 
vate grain  123  Founds  Tar- 
sus 277  484 

Troglodytes  309 

Trophonius:  15  Robber,  mur- 
derer, oracle  137  Horrors  of 
his  cave  137.     164  428 

Troy:  loi  135402  431 

Tullius.  Laurea  453 

TuUus  Hostilius  471 

Turnus:  412  474 

Tusculum:  429  447 

Twelve  hundred  year  search.  A: 
226 

Tyana:  City  of  259 

Tyndarus:  Restored  to  life  59 

Typhosus:  Giant  under  Mt.  Etna 

497 
Typhon:      His      ravages      275 

Wounded  by  Zeus  365 
Tyre:  Its  antiquity  355 
Tyrian  purple  355 
Tyro:  Her  sad  life  92 
Tyrrhenian  Sea:  444 

Ultra-violet  ray:  419 

Ulysses:  His  inconsistency  16 
His  peculiar  courtship  65.  109 
U.  and  the  Sirens  182  His 
writings  210  At  Temesa  215. 
260  His  return  to  Ithaca  279 
Recognised  by  his  avirse  280. 
402  487 

Umbritius:  434 

Umpires  of  Olympia  90 


Ur  of  the  Chaldees  356 
Uranus:  First  god  257 
Urion:  398 

Vacuna.  Temple  of:  459 

Vala:  Horace's  friend  474 

Van  Winkle:  An  ancient  116 

Varro  22  83 

Varying  traditions:  Cause  of  83 

Velabra.  The:  429 

Venus  (Aphrodite): 

I  Insanifies  Proetus'  daugh- 
ters 22  Black  V.  28  Blinds 
Erymanthus  30  V.  and 
Adonis  32  Her  golden  ap- 
ples 75  Called  Acidalian 
149  Gives  the  Sirens  wings 
182.  188  402  484 

Vercingetorix :  438 

Versailles  of  Antioch:  364 

Vesta.  Temple  of  433 

Vestal  Virgins:  470 

Vesuvius  426  458  481 

Vetulonia's  insignia   copied   by 
Rome  469 

Vetus.  Antistius:  453 

Via  Egnatia  187 

Vice  festival  364 

Victoria.  Queen:  188 

Victory  monuments.  None:  140 

Villas     (see    also    Pliny):     434 
Comedy  and  Tragedy  v.  481 

Vine:  Originated  in  India  397 

Virbius    (see    also    Hippolytus) 
144 

Virgil:  412     His  tomb  426,  455 
His  end  426,  460 

Virgin:  Hera  58.  429  440 

Vishnu  398 

Vishnu-Parana  398 

Visigoth  211 

Vitruvius:  264 

Vivaldi.  Lieut.:  434 

Volcanic  action  in  Greece  56 

Von  Hoffman  villa  434 

Vulcan  (Hephaestus): 

I.  Assists  at  Athena's  birth 
5,  98  His  unerring  javelin 
124.  167  His  diamond 
plow  278  Makes  the  fleet- 
est dog  281 


720 


INDEX  B 


Wages  in  sun-gold  202 
Walking  over  fire  259 
Walton.  Isaac:  62 
War-field  of  gods  and  giants  29 
War:  First  shot  in  the  World-w. 

207 
Washington.  George  475 
Water:   Tested   by    weight   286 

Character  of  good  water  357 

Lightest  w.  368 
Water  finders  i 
Watering  places:   Eccentricities 

of  451 
Well  digger:  The  first  46 
Whale's  strength  84 
Wheat:    First   domesticated    w. 

122     First  wild  w.  491 
White:  Blackbirds  3     River  182 

Cattle  209     Snakes  444 
Widow  Marpesa:  8 
Wild  Beast  country  307 
Wild  madder  24 
Winds:  Temple  of  the  119 
Wine:  Poured  into  Springs  202, 

258,  364 

W  flavored  palms  350  Chemi- 
cal w.  439     Falernian  459 
Wise     men:     The     seven     164 

Simonides  as  one  of  them  396. 

397 
Witch  of  Endor  137 
Wolf:  Eats  a  temple  thief   163 

Avenges  Phocus'  death  281 
Woman:  The  first  i,  107     First 

w.  horse  trainer  65     The  Lady 

of  Letters  325 


Woman's  dress:  Leucippus  in  31. 

299 
Women:   Forbidden  to  cross  a 

river  30     Two  w.  to  one  man 

98     Committee   of   w.   killed 

Medea's  children  no 
Women  juries  114 
Women's  hair:  Rope  of  241 
Wonderful  circumstance  215 
Words:  Endurance  of    100     w. 

more  enduring  than  metal  108 
Worm:  Peculiar  22 
Wrestling:  90  123 
Writing:  Antiquity  of  210 
Writing  taught  by  birds  325 
Wrongs  of  one  age  the  rights  of 

another  no 

Xenophontes  217 

Xerxes:  66  146  163  At  Ther- 
mopylae 180  Punishes  a  150- 
year-old  theft  266 

X-ray:  An  ancient  95  322 

Xuthus:  120 

Year:  1200  y.  search  226 
Youth:  Fountain  of  171,  175 

Zaleucus:  From  shepherd  to  law- 
maker 214  His  uprightness 
214 

Zeno  217 

Zephyrus  marries  Flora  314 

Zethus:  Amphion's  brother  130. 
Marries  Thebe  131.  Saves 
his  mother  Antiope  133  142 

Zeus  (see  Jupiter) 


INDEX  C 

Countries,  Divisions;  Districts;  Islands 


Africa,  421 

Arabia,  472 
Armenia,  488 
Asia  Minor,  312 
Assyria,  491 

Belgium,  502 

Egypt,  447 
England,  501 
Ethiopia,  469 


Countries,  Divisions: 

France,  502 

Germany,  521 

Graecia.  Magna,  293 

Greece,  i 
Central,  140 
Northern,  257 
Peloponnesus,  i 

India,  531 
Italy,  568 


Palestine,  476 
Peloponnesus,  I 
Persia,  491 
Phoenicia,  476 

Russia,  527 

Scythia,  527 
Spain,  512 
Switzerland,  510 
Syria,  491 


Foreign       countries.    Magna  Grsecia,  293 
421  Mesopotamia,  486 


Districts: 


Acamania,  253 
Achaia,  116 
^tolia,  244 
Apulia,  628 
Arcadia,  i 
Argolis,  47 
Attica,  140 

Bithynia,  319 
Boeotia,  167 

Calabria,  630 
Campania,  621 
Cappadocia,  356 
Caria,  358 
Cilicia,  377 
Colchis,  380 
Corinthia,  126 

46 


Greek 
Roman 

Elis,  104 
Epirus,  257 
Etruria,  636 


page  I 
568 


Gallia  Transpadana, 
655 

lUyricum,  265 

Laconia,  75 
Latium,  568 
Liguria,  650 
Locris.  East,  254 
Lycia,  372 
Lydia,  330 

Macedonia,  280 
Megaris,  138 

721 


Messenia,  94 
Mysia,  312 

Paphlagonia,  326 
Peligni,  631 
Phocis,  222 
Phrygia,  341 
Pontus,  327 

Sabini,  634 
Sicyonia,  123 

Thessaly,  266 
Thrace,  288 

Umbria,  646 

Venetia,  658 


722 


INDEX  C 


iEgina,  387 
Andros,  401 

Ceos,  405 
Cos,  414 
Crete,  417 
Cydonea,  401 

Delos,  410 


661 


Islands: 

Greek      page  383 
Roman  '"^' 

Euboea,  391 
Ithaca,  383 
Lesbos,  398 
Nisyrus,  416 
Samos,  403 


Sardinia,  68 1 
Sicily,  661 

Tenedos,  397 
Tenos,  409 


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